CHAPTER III
MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER AS I SAW THEM;
AND BELGIAN SCHOOLGIRLS AS I KNEW THEM
Let me give here my mother's, and my own, account of the impressions made upon us by M. Heger's personal appearance at this time.
'He is very like one of those selected Roman Catholic Priests,' my mother told her Dutch relatives, 'who go into society and look after the eldest sons of Catholic noblemen. He has too good a nose for a Belgian and, I should say, he has Italian blood in him.'
My own report, to my brother, who made anxious inquiries of me, was less flattering perhaps, but it was not intended to be disrespectful. I always see M. Heger as I saw him then: as too interesting to be alarming; but too alarming to be lovable.
'He is rather like Punch,' I said, 'but better looking of course; and not so good-tempered.'
Let me justify these two descriptions by showing that both of them were based upon an accurate observation of the man himself.
M. Heger, as I remember him, was no longer what Charlotte called him, angrily, in her letter to Ellen Nussey, a little Black Being, and, affectionately, under the disguise of Paul Emanuel, 'a spare, alert man, showing the velvet blackness of a close-shorn head, and the sallow ivory of his brow beneath.' M. Heger in 1859 was still alert, but he was not spare, he was inclining towards stoutness. His hair was not velvet black, but grizzled, and he was bald on the crown of his head, in a way that might have been mistaken for a tonsure; and this no doubt added to the resemblance my mother saw in him to a Priest. He did not look in the least old, however. His brow, not sallow but bronzed, was unwrinkled; his eyes were still clear and penetrating (Charlotte said they were violet blue; and certainly she ought to have known. Still, do violet eyes penetrate one's soul like points of steel?) The Roman nose, that my mother thought too good a nose to be Belgian, and that reminded me of Punch (but a good-looking Punch) was a commanding feature. And the curved chin (also suggesting a good-looking Punch, to a young and irreverent observer), although it indicated humour, meant sarcasm, rather than a sense of fun. But Monsieur Heger had one really beautiful feature, that I remember often watching with extreme pleasure when he recited fine poetry or read noble prose:—his mouth, when uttering words that moved him, had a delightful smile, not in the least tender towards ordinary mortals, but almost tender in its homage to the excellence of writers of genius.
In brief, what M. Heger's face revealed when studied as the index of his natural qualities, was intellectual superiority, an imperious temper, a good deal of impatience against stupidity, and very little patience with his fellow-creatures generally; it revealed too a good deal of humour; and a very little kind-heartedness, to be weighed against any amount of irritability. It was a sort of face bound to interest one; but not, so it seems to me, to conquer affection. For with all these qualities of intellect, power, humour, and a little kind-heartedness, one quality was totally lacking: there was no love in M. Heger's face, nor in his character, as I recall it; and, oddly enough, looking back now to him as one of the personages in my own past to whom I owe most, and whose mind I most admire, I have to recognise that in my sentiment towards M. Heger to-day even, made up as it is half of admiration and half of amusement, there is not one particle of love.
I have said—in connection with my first impression, that 'undying hate' was the sentiment that M. Heger had conceived for me—that really 'it was not so bad as all that.' Still, what happened at this first interview, if it did not determine any deep-rooted antipathy to me, planted from this moment in M. Heger's breast, did indicate, to a certain extent, what the character of our future relationships was to be—out of lesson-hours. In these hours, our relationships of Professor and pupil were ideal. Seldom did an occasional misunderstanding trouble them. Certainly, in my own day, no other pupil entered with so much sympathetic admiration into the spirit of M. Heger's teaching as I did. He saw and felt this; and here I, too, was for him, and as a pupil, sympathetic. But in our personal relationships, there were certain things in me that were antipathetic to M. Heger, and that rubbed him so much the wrong way, that he was constantly (so it still seems to me) unjust to what were not faults, but idiosyncrasies, that belonged to my nationality and my character. First of all, there was my English accent: and here this singular remark has to be made: I never spoke such purely British French to any one as to M. Heger; and this was the result of my constant endeavour to be very careful to avoid the accent he disliked, when speaking to him. The second cause of offence in me was also due to my nationality, or rather to my upbringing. Like all English children of my generation, I had been brought up to esteem it undignified, and even a breach of good manners, to cry in public: and although I was tender-hearted and emotional, I was not in the least hysterical; and except under the stress of extreme distress, it cost me very little self-control not to weep, as my Belgian schoolfellows did, very often, at the smallest scolding; or even without a scolding, and simply because they were bored—'ennuyée.' I remember now my surprise, at first hearing the reply to my question to a sobbing schoolfellow: 'Pourquoi pleures-tu? 'Parce que je m'ennuie.' 'Why?' 'Mais je te le dis parce que je m'ennuie.' Well, but M. Heger liked his pupils to cry, when he said disagreeable things: or, in any case, he became gentle, and melted, when they wept, and was amiable at once. But when one did not weep, but appeared either unmoved, or indignant, he became more and more disagreeable: and, at length, exasperated. A third idiosyncrasy in me that he disliked was not national, but personal. It was due to a sort of incipient Rousseau-ism,—that must have been inborn, because I was never taught it, even in England. And yet there it was, implanted in me as a sentiment, long before I recognised it as an opinion or conviction, that I could express in words! This natural sentiment, or principle, was the belief that 'I was born free: that my soul was my own: and that there was no virtue, wisdom, nor happiness possible for me outside of the laws of my own constitution.' Unformulated, but inherent in me, this fundamental belief in myself as a law to myself, no doubt betrayed itself in a sort of independence of mind and manner very aggravating to my elders and betters, and to those put in authority over me. And especially aggravating to an authoritative Professor, who was, in all domains, opposed to individualism, and the doctrine of personal rights and liberty. Thus in literature M. Heger was a classic; in religion he was a dogmatic Catholic; in politics he was an anti-democrat, a lover of vigorous kings; and by constitution he was a king in his own right: a masterful man, not only a law to himself, but a lord, by virtue of his sense of superiority, to everyone else.