Little Janey had no restraints of politeness upon her. She pulled at the end of his eccentric old tartan shawl. “C’est parce que vous êtes si méchant,” she cried. “C’est parce que you are a fright—a horrible, nasty, old man. I hate you too,” cried Janey—“vous êtes méchant, méchant! Personne vous aime; vous êtes an old, old, wicked! a horror! a fright! all wrapped in a shawl like an old vieille fille; nobody loves you—they all hate you,” she cried.
M. Goudron was dismayed by this sudden attack: he had a weakness—he loved children. He cried in a querulous tone, “Petite, vous n’en savez rien,” loudly, as if defying the world. At the window up-stairs Blanchette and Ursule were secretly kissing the tips of their fingers, waving anxious salutations to the departing ladies of the château. As for Helen, she held her dress close to her, not to touch him as she brushed past into her own room. She was not so outspoken as Janey, neither did she think, like her father, that these extraordinary antipathies and political extravagances were fictitious like the politics of a vaudeville. But the horror was evanescent, and how delightful was the reflection that she had found a pair of friends!
CHAPTER X.
After this a new life began for Helen. Cécile and Thérèse de Vieux-bois were much more highly educated than she was; they were far more fluent in conversation; they knew a great deal more than Helen. She, poor, solitary child, in her luxurious rural palace, had read nothing but novels; whereas they had read scarcely any novels at all, but a great many better things, and still continued their studies with a conscientiousness and energy at which she gazed with wonder. Nothing could have been more different from their carefully guarded and sedulously instructed life than the secluded existence of the millionaire’s daughter, broken sometimes by the noisy brilliancy of a great dinner-party, at which, perhaps, she and her governess were the only ladies present, or by the arrival of the huge box of light literature which her father substituted when she was seventeen for the cakes and toys, and dainties of all kinds, with which he had overwhelmed her at an earlier age. This was Mr Goulburn’s idea of what was best for girls—cakes and sweetmeats, then novels, with as many balls and amusements as could be procured. He had intended that Helen should be fully supplied with these later pleasures; but he had not succeeded, as has been said, in introducing her to the county, and all his plans for town had been mysteriously cut short.
But the Count de Vieux-bois had gone upon a very different plan; and it is quite possible that just as Helen found it much more lifelike and real to mend Janey’s frocks and teach her her letters, so the demoiselles Cécile and Thérèse might have found more satisfaction in the abortive balls and dinner-parties, which might not have come to nothing in their hands. But the life of which Helen became a spectator at the château filled her with admiration and awe. She could only look with respectful alarm at the volumes which the others worked steadily through, morning after morning, with the most noble devotion. No one so much as saw the young ladies at the château till twelve o’clock, when the big bell rang, and they all came out of their rooms to the first common meal. “When do you work?” Cécile had said almost severely when Helen told her of the breakfasts in England. “If it is so, I shall not like that at all. When can one work?—and if one does not read, and read much, how shall one be a companion to one’s husband?” the young lady asked with great gravity. We have already said that domestic virtue and duty is, in France, for the time being, the highest fashion, the finest cachet of supreme aristocracy. Helen made the most simple, but, to this highly educated young Frenchwoman, the most bewildering reply.
“Oh! perhaps he will not read very much either. Gentlemen never do; they read the ‘Times’ and the ‘Field’—and; have I said anything wrong?”
(“Elle est folle donc,” said Thérèse to Cécile. “C’est que son père est un homme de sport,” said Cécile in an undertone to Thérèse.)
“You deceive yourself, chère Hélène,” said the elder sister with a smile. “The journals are nothing; one must know what is going on. But if you knew how difficult it is to keep up with the reading of gentlemen—our dear father, for example. Mamma did not try. She said, ‘It is useless at my age. I cannot do it; my daughters, I leave it to you.’ And we tried, but never succeeded. Nevertheless, papa was very kind. He always recognised that there were difficulties. But I am resolved to be a companion to my husband. I will not leave it to my daughters,” said Cécile. “I have read your great writers, and a great deal of the constitutional history. And now I shall be ready to take up anything that John is doing.”
“Is his name John?” said Helen, with rising interest.
“It is a very pretty name,” said Cécile; “there are a great many in England. It is something like our Jean in France, but more distingué.”