<SPAN name="chap04"></SPAN>
<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
<h2><i>MADAME DE LA ROUGIERRE</i></h2>
<p> </p>
<p>On a sudden, on the grass before me, stood an odd figure—a
very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moon,
courtesying extraordinarily low, and rather fantastically.</p>
<p>I stared in something like a horror upon the large and rather
hollow features which I did not know, smiling very unpleasantly
on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the
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grey woman began gobbling and cackling shrilly—I could not
distinctly hear <i>what</i> through the window—and gesticulating
oddly with her long hands and arms.</p>
<p>As she drew near the window, I flew to the fireplace, and rang
the bell frantically, and seeing her still there, and fearing that
she might break into the room, I flew out of the door, very much
frightened, and met Branston the butler in the lobby.</p>
<p>'There's a woman at the window!' I gasped; 'turn her away,
please.'</p>
<p>If I had said a man, I suppose fat Branston would have summoned and sent
forward a detachment of footmen. As it was, he
bowed gravely, with a—</p>
<p>'Yes,'m—shall,'m.'</p>
<p>And with an air of authority approached the window.</p>
<p>I don't think that he was pleasantly impressed himself by the
first sight of our visitor, for he stopped short some steps of the
window, and demanded rather sternly—</p>
<p>'What ye doin' there, woman?'</p>
<p>To this summons, her answer, which occupied a little time,
was inaudible to me. But Branston replied—</p>
<p>'I wasn't aware, ma'am; I heerd nothin'; if you'll go round
<i>that</i> way, you'll see the hall-door steps, and I'll speak to the
master, and do as he shall order.'</p>
<p>The figure said something and pointed.</p>
<p>'Yes, that's it, and ye can't miss the door.'</p>
<p>And Mr. Branston returned slowly down the long room, and
halted with out-turned pumps and a grave inclination before
me, and the faintest amount of interrogation in the announcement—</p>
<p>'Please,'m, she says she's the governess.'</p>
<p>'The governess! <i>What</i> governess?'</p>
<p>Branston was too well-bred to smile, and he said thoughtfully—</p>
<p>'P'raps,'m, I'd best ask the master?'</p>
<p>To which I assented, and away strode the flat pumps of the
butler to the library.</p>
<p>I stood breathless in the hall. Every girl at my age knows
how much is involved in such an advent. I also heard Mrs.
Rusk, in a minute or two more, emerge I suppose from the
study. She walked quickly, and muttered sharply to herself—an
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evil trick, in which she indulged when much 'put about.' I
should have been glad of a word with her; but I fancied she was
vexed, and would not have talked satisfactorily. She did not,
however, come my way; merely crossing the hall with her quick,
energetic step.</p>
<p>Was it really the arrival of a governess? Was that apparition
which had impressed me so unpleasantly to take the command of
me—to sit alone with me, and haunt me perpetually with her
sinister looks and shrilly gabble?</p>
<p>I was just making up my mind to go to Mary Quince, and
learn something definite, when I heard my father's step approaching from
the library: so I quietly re-entered the drawingroom,
but with an anxious and throbbing heart.</p>
<p>When he came in, as usual, he patted me on the head gently,
with a kind of smile, and then began his silent walk up and
down the room. I was yearning to question him on the point
that just then engrossed me so disagreeably; but the awe in
which I stood of him forbade.</p>
<p>After a time he stopped at the window, the curtain of which
I had drawn, and the shutter partly opened, and he looked out,
perhaps with associations of his own, on the scene I had been
contemplating.</p>
<p>It was not for nearly an hour after, that my father suddenly,
after his wont, in a few words, apprised me of the arrival of
Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended
and perfectly qualified. My heart sank with a sure
presage of ill. I already disliked, distrusted, and feared her.</p>
<p>I had more than an apprehension of her temper and fear
of possibly abused authority. The large-featured, smirking phantom,
saluting me so oddly in the moonlight, retained ever after
its peculiar and unpleasant hold upon my nerves.</p>
<p>'Well, Miss Maud, dear, I hope you'll like your new governess—for
it's more than <i>I</i> do, just at present at least,' said Mrs. Rusk,
sharply—she was awaiting me in my room. 'I hate them French-women; they're
not natural, I think. I gave her her supper in
my room. She eats like a wolf, she does, the great raw-boned
hannimal. I wish you saw her in bed as I did. I put her next
the clock-room—she'll hear the hours betimes, I'm thinking.
You never saw such a sight. The great long nose and hollow
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cheeks of her, and oogh! such a mouth! I felt a'most like little
Red Riding-Hood—I did, Miss.'</p>
<p>Here honest Mary Quince, who enjoyed Mrs. Rusk's satire,
a weapon in which she was not herself strong, laughed outright.</p>
<p>'Turn down the bed, Mary. She's very agreeable—she is, just
now—all new-comers is; but she did not get many compliments
from me, Miss—no, I rayther think not. I wonder why honest
English girls won't answer the gentry for governesses, instead of
them gaping, scheming, wicked furriners? Lord forgi' me, I think
they're all alike.'</p>
<p>Next morning I made acquaintance with Madame de la Rougierre.
She was tall, masculine, a little ghastly perhaps, and
draped in purple silk, with a lace cap, and great bands of black
hair, too thick and black, perhaps, to correspond quite naturally
with her bleached and sallow skin, her hollow jaws, and the
fine but grim wrinkles traced about her brows and eyelids. She
smiled, she nodded, and then for a good while she scanned me
in silence with a steady cunning eye, and a stern smile.</p>
<p>'And how is she named—what is Mademoiselle's name?' said
the tall stranger.</p>
<p>'<i>Maud</i>, Madame.'</p>
<p>'Maud!—what pretty name! Eh bien! I am very sure my
dear Maud she will be very good little girl—is not so?—and I am
sure I shall love you vary moche. And what 'av you been learning, Maud, my
dear cheaile—music, French, German, eh?'</p>
<p>'Yes, a little; and I had just begun the use of the globes when
my governess went away.'</p>
<p>I nodded towards the globes, which stood near her, as I said
this.</p>
<p>'Oh! yes—the globes;' and she spun one of them with her
great hand. 'Je vous expliquerai tout cela � fond.'</p>
<p>Madame de la Rougierre, I found, was always quite ready to
explain everything '� fond;' but somehow her 'explications,' as
she termed them, were not very intelligible, and when pressed
her temper woke up; so that I preferred, after a while, accepting
the expositions just as they came.</p>
<p>Madame was on an unusually large scale, a circumstance
which made some of her traits more startling, and altogether
rendered her, in her strange way, more awful in the eyes of a
nervous <i>child,</i> I may say, such as I was. She used to look at me
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for a long time sometimes, with the peculiar smile I have mentioned, and a
great finger upon her lip, like the Eleusinian
priestess on the vase.</p>
<p>She would sit, too, sometimes for an hour together, looking
into the fire or out of the window, plainly seeing nothing, and
with an odd, fixed look of something like triumph—very nearly
a smile—on her cunning face.</p>
<p>She was by no means a pleasant <i>gouvernante</i> for a nervous
girl of my years. Sometimes she had accesses of a sort of hilarity
which frightened me still more than her graver moods, and I
will describe these by-and-by.</p>
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