In the course of another fortnight
I had seen sufficient of Frances
Evans Henri, to enable me to
form a more definite opinion
of her character. I found her
possessed in a somewhat remarkable
degree of at least two good points,
viz., perseverance and a sense
of duty; I found she was really
capable of applying to study,
of contending with difficulties.
At first I offered her the same
help which I had always found
it necessary to confer on the
others; I began with unloosing
for her each knotty point, but
I soon discovered that such help
was regarded by my new pupil
as degrading; she recoiled from
it with a certain proud impatience.
Hereupon I appointed her long
lessons, and left her to solve
alone any perplexities they might
present. She set to the task
with serious ardour, and having
quickly accomplished one labour,
eagerly demanded more. So much
for her perseverance; as to her
sense of duty, it evinced itself
thus: she liked to learn, but
hated to teach; her progress
as a pupil depended upon herself,
and I saw that on herself she
could calculate with certainty;
her success as a teacher rested
partly, perhaps chiefly, upon
the will of others; it cost her
a most painful effort to enter
into conflict with this foreign
will, to endeavour to bend it
into subjection to her own; for
in what regarded people in general
the action of her will was impeded
by many scruples; it was as unembarrassed
as strong where her own affairs
were concerned, and to it she
could at any time subject her
inclination, if that inclination
went counter to her convictions
of right; yet when called upon
to wrestle with the propensities,
the habits, the faults of others,
of children especially, who are
deaf to reason, and, for the
most part, insensate to persuasion,
her will sometimes almost refused
to act; then came in the sense
of duty, and forced the reluctant
will into operation. A wasteful
expense of energy and labour
was frequently the consequence;
Frances toiled for and with her
pupils like a drudge, but it
was long ere her conscientious
exertions were rewarded by anything
like docility on their part,
because they saw that they had
power over her, inasmuch as by
resisting her painful attempts
to convince, persuade, control--by
forcing her to the employment
of coercive measures--they could
inflict upon her exquisite suffering.
Human beings--human children
especially--seldom deny themselves
the pleasure of exercising a
power which they are conscious
of possessing, even though that
power consist only in a capacity
to make others wretched; a pupil
whose sensations are duller than
those of his instructor, while
his nerves are tougher and his
bodily strength perhaps greater,
has an immense advantage over
that instructor, and he will
generally use it relentlessly,
because the very young, very
healthy, very thoughtless, know
neither how to sympathize nor
how to spare. Frances, I fear,
suffered much; a continual weight
seemed to oppress her spirits;
I have said she did not live
in the house, and whether in
her own abode, wherever that
might be, she wore the same preoccupied,
unsmiling, sorrowfully resolved
air that always shaded her features
under the roof of Mdlle. Reuter,
I could not tell.
One day I gave,
as a devoir, the trite little
anecdote of
Alfred tending cakes in the herdsman's
hut, to be related with amplifications.
A singular affair most of the
pupils made of it; brevity was
what they had chiefly studied;
the majority of the narratives
were perfectly unintelligible;
those of Sylvie and Leonie Ledru
alone pretended to anything like
sense and connection. Eulalie,
indeed, had hit, upon a clever
expedient for at once ensuring
accuracy and saving trouble;
she had obtained access somehow
to an abridged history of England,
and had copied the anecdote out
fair. I wrote on the margin of
her production "Stupid and deceitful," and
then tore it down the middle.
Last in the
pile of single-leaved devoirs,
I found one of several
sheets, neatly written out and
stitched together; I knew the
hand, and scarcely needed the
evidence of the signature "Frances
Evans Henri" to confirm my conjecture
as to the writer's identity.
Night was my usual time for
correcting devoirs, and my own
room the usual scene of such
task--task most onerous hitherto;
and it seemed strange to me to
feel rising within me an incipient
sense of interest, as I snuffed
the candle and addressed myself
to the perusal of the poor teacher's
manuscript.
"Now," thought I, "I
shall see a glimpse of what
she really
is; I shall get an idea of the
nature and extent of her powers;
not that she can be expected
to express herself well in a
foreign tongue, but still, if
she has any mind, here will be
a reflection of it."
The narrative commenced by
a description of a Saxon peasant's
hut, situated within the confines
of a great, leafless, winter
forest; it represented an evening
in December; flakes of snow were
falling, and the herdsman foretold
a heavy storm; he summoned his
wife to aid him in collecting
their flock, roaming far away
on the pastoral banks of the
Thone; he warns her that it will
be late ere they return. The
good woman is reluctant to quit
her occupation of baking cakes
for the evening meal; but acknowledging
the primary importance of securing
the herds and flocks, she puts
on her sheep-skin mantle; and,
addressing a stranger who rests
half reclined on a bed of rushes
near the hearth, bids him mind
the bread till her return.
"Take care, young man," she
continues, "that you fasten the
door well after us; and, above
all, open to none in our absence;
whatever sound you hear, stir
not, and look not out. The night
will soon fall; this forest is
most wild and lonely; strange
noises are often heard therein
after sunset; wolves haunt these
glades, and Danish warriors infest
the country; worse things are
talked of; you might chance to
hear, as it were, a child cry,
and on opening the door to afford
it succour, a greet black bull,
or a shadowy goblin dog, might
rush over the threshold; or,
more awful still, if something
flapped, as with wings, against
the lattice, and then a raven
or a white dove flew in and settled
on the hearth, such a visitor
would be a sure sign of misfortune
to the house; therefore, heed
my advice, and lift the latchet
for nothing.
Her husband calls her away,
both depart. The stranger, left
alone, listens awhile to the
muffled snow-wind, the remote,
swollen sound of the river, and
then he speaks.
"It is Christmas Eve," says
he, "I mark the date; here I
sit alone on a rude couch of
rushes, sheltered by the thatch
of a herdsman's hut; I, whose
inheritance was a kingdom, owe
my night's harbourage to a poor
serf; my throne is usurped, my
crown presses the brow of an
invader; I have no friends; my
troops wander broken in the hills
of Wales; reckless robbers spoil
my country; my subjects lie prostrate,
their breasts crushed by the
heel of the brutal Dane. Fate!
thou hast done thy worst, and
now thou standest before me resting
thy hand on thy blunted blade.
Ay; I see thine eye confront
mine and demand why I still live,
why I still hope. Pagan demon,
I credit not thine omnipotence,
and so cannot succumb to thy
power. My God, whose Son, as
on this night, took on Him the
form of man, and for man vouchsafed
to suffer and bleed, controls
thy hand, and without His behest
thou canst not strike a stroke.
My God is sinless, eternal, all-wise--in
Him is my trust; and though stripped
and crushed by thee--though naked,
desolate, void of resource--I
do not despair, I cannot despair:
were the lance of Guthrum now
wet with my blood, I should not
despair. I watch, I toil, I hope,
I pray; Jehovah, in his own time,
will aid."
I need not continue the quotation;
the whole devoir was in the same
strain. There were errors of
orthography, there were foreign
idioms, there were some faults
of construction, there were verbs
irregular transformed into verbs
regular; it was mostly made up,
as the above example shows, of
short and somewhat rude sentences,
and the style stood in great
need of polish and sustained
dignity; yet such as it was,
I had hitherto seen nothing like
it in the course of my professorial
experience. The girl's mind had
conceived a picture of the hut,
of the two peasants, of the crownless
king; she had imagined the wintry
forest, she had recalled the
old Saxon ghost-legends, she
had appreciated Alfred's courage
under calamity, she had remembered
his Christian education, and
had shown him, with the rooted
confidence of those primitive
days, relying on the scriptural
Jehovah for aid against the mythological
Destiny. This she had done without
a hint from me: I had given the
subject, but not said a word
about the manner of treating
it.
"I will find, or make, an opportunity
of speaking to her," I said to
myself as I rolled the devoir
up; "I will learn what she has
of English in her besides the
name of Frances Evans; she is
no novice in the language, that
is evident, yet she told me she
had neither been in England,
nor taken lessons in English,
nor lived in English families."
In the course
of my next lesson, I made a
report of the other
devoirs, dealing out praise and
blame in very small retail parcels,
according to my custom, for there
was no use in blaming severely,
and high encomiums were rarely
merited. I said nothing of Mdlle.
Henri's exercise, and, spectacles
on nose, I endeavoured to decipher
in her countenance her sentiments
at the omission. I wanted to
find out whether in her existed
a consciousness of her own talents. "If
she thinks she did a clever thing
in composing that devoir, she
will now look mortified," thought
I. Grave as usual, almost sombre,
was her face; as usual, her eyes
were fastened on the cahier open
before her; there was something,
I thought, of expectation in
her attitude, as I concluded
a brief review of the last devoir,
and when, casting it from me
and rubbing my hands, I bade
them take their grammars, some
slight change did pass over her
air and mien, as though she now
relinquished a faint prospect
of pleasant excitement; she had
been waiting for something to
be discussed in which she had
a degree of interest; the discussion
was not to come on, so expectation
sank back, shrunk and sad, but
attention, promptly filling up
the void, repaired in a moment
the transient collapse of feature;
still, I felt, rather than saw,
during the whole course of the
lesson, that a hope had been
wrenched from her, and that if
she did not show distress, it
was because she would not.
At four o'clock, when the bell
rang and the room was in immediate
tumult, instead of taking my
hat and starting from the estrade,
I sat still a moment. I looked
at Frances, she was putting her
books into her cabas; having
fastened the button, she raised
her head; encountering my eye,
she made a quiet, respectful
obeisance, as bidding good afternoon,
and was turning to depart:--
"Come here," said
I, lifting my finger at the
same time. She
hesitated; she could not hear
the words amidst the uproar now
pervading both school-rooms;
I repeated the sign; she approached;
again she paused within half
a yard of the estrade, and looked
shy, and still doubtful whether
she had mistaken my meaning.
"Step up," I
said, speaking with decision.
It is the only
way of dealing with diffident,
easily embarrassed characters,
and with some slight manual aid
I presently got her placed just
where wanted her to be, that
is, between my desk and the window,
where she was screened from the
rush of the second division,
and where no one could sneak
behind her to listen.
"Take a seat," I
said, placing a tabouret; and
I made her sit
down. I knew what I was doing
would be considered a very strange
thing, and, what was more, I
did not care. Frances knew it
also, and, I fear, by an appearance
of agitation and trembling, that
she cared much. I drew from my
pocket the rolled-up devoir.
"This it, yours, I suppose?" said
I, addressing her in English,
for I now felt sure she could
speak English.
"Yes," she
answered distinctly; and as
I unrolled it and laid
it out flat on the desk before
her with my hand upon it, and
a pencil in that hand, I saw
her moved, and, as it were, kindled;
her depression beamed as a cloud
might behind which the sun is
burning.
"This devoir has numerous faults," said
I. "It will take you some years
of careful study before you are
in a condition to write English
with absolute correctness. Attend:
I will point out some principal
defects." And I went through
it carefully, noting every error,
and demonstrating why they were
errors, and how the words or
phrases ought to have been written.
In the course of this sobering
process she became calm. I now
went on:-
"As to the
substance of your devoir, Mdlle.
Henri, it has
surprised me; I perused it with
pleasure, because I saw in it
some proofs of taste and fancy.
Taste and fancy are not the highest
gifts of the human mind, but
such as they are you possess
them--not probably in a paramount
degree, but in a degree beyond
what the majority can boast.
You may then take courage; cultivate
the faculties that God and nature
have bestowed on you, and do
not fear in any crisis of suffering,
under any pressure of injustice,
to derive free and full consolation
from the consciousness of their
strength and rarity."
"Strength and rarity!" I repeated
to myself; "ay, the words are
probably true," for on looking
up, I saw the sun had dissevered
its screening cloud, her countenance
was transfigured, a smile shone
in her eyes--a smile almost triumphant;
it seemed to say--
"I am glad
you have been forced to discover
so much of my nature;
you need not so carefully moderate
your language. Do you think I
am myself a stranger to myself?
What you tell me in terms so
qualified, I have known fully
from a child."
She did say this as plainly
as a frank and flashing glance
could, but in a moment the glow
of her complexion, the radiance
of her aspect, had subsided;
if strongly conscious of her
talents, she was equally conscious
of her harassing defects, and
the remembrance of these obliterated
for a single second, now reviving
with sudden force, at once subdued
the too vivid characters in which
her sense of her powers had been
expressed. So quick was the revulsion
of feeling, I had not time to
cheek her triumph by reproof;
ere I could contract my brows
to a frown she had become serious
and almost mournful-looking.
"Thank you, sir," said
she, rising. There was gratitude
both
in her voice and in the look
with which she accompanied it.
It was time, indeed, for our
conference to terminate; for,
when I glanced around, behold
all the boarders (the day-scholars
had departed) were congregated
within a yard or two of my desk,
and stood staring with eyes and
mouths wide open; the three maitresses
formed a whispering knot in one
corner, and, close at my elbow,
was the directress, sitting on
a low chair, calmly clipping
the tassels of her finished purse.
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