Read Ebook: Ricordi di Parigi by De Amicis Edmondo

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 228 lines and 55180 words, and 5 pages

Mrs. Ogden drew her daughter to her; the gesture was full of soft, compelling strength.

"It's a shame!"

"What is, dear?" said Mrs. Ogden, suddenly attentive.

"Father!" cried Joan defiantly.

"Hush, hush, darling."

"But it is; he bullies you."

"No, dear, don't say such things; your father has a weak heart."

"Hush, Joan, you mustn't. I know I'm not strong, but we must never let him know that I sometimes feel ill."

"He ought to know it!"

"But, Joan, you were so frightened when he had that attack last Christmas."

"That was a real one," said Joan decidedly.

"Oh well, dearest--but never mind, I'm all right again now--run away, my lamb. Miss Rodney must have come; it's past lesson time."

"Are you sure you're all right?" said Joan doubtfully.

Mrs. Ogden leant back in the chair and gazed pensively out of the window. "My little Joan," she murmured.

Joan trembled, a great tenderness took hold of her. She stooped and kissed her mother's hand lingeringly.

But as the sisters stood in the hall outside, Joan looked even paler than usual, her face was a little pinched, and there was a curious expression in her eyes.

"Oh, Joan, it was jolly of you," Milly began.

Joan pushed her roughly. "You're a poor thing, Milly."

"What's that?"

"What you are, a selfish little pig!"

"You haven't got any guts."

"What are guts?"

"What Alice's young man says a Marine ought to have."

"I don't want them then," said Milly proudly.

SEABOURNE-ON-SEA was small and select. The Ogdens' house in Seabourne was small but not particularly select, for it had once been let out in apartments. The landlord now accepted a reduced rent for the sake of getting the colonel and his family as tenants. He was old-fashioned and clung to the gentry.

In 1880 the Ogdens had left India hurriedly on account of Colonel Ogden's health. When Milly was a baby and Joan three years old, the family had turned their backs on the pleasant luxury of Indian life. Home they had come to England and a pension, Colonel Ogden morose and chafing at the useless years ahead; Mrs. Ogden a pretty woman, wide-eyed and melancholy after all the partings, especially after one parting which her virtue would have rendered inevitable in any case.

They had gone to rooms somewhere in Bayswater; the cooking was execrable, the house dirty. Mrs. Ogden, used to the easy Indian service and her own comfortable bungalow, found it well-nigh impossible to make the best of things; she fretted. That winter there had been bad fogs which resulted in a severe heart attack for Colonel Ogden. The doctor advised a house by the sea, and mentioned Seabourne as having a suitable climate. The result was: Leaside, The Crescent, Seabourne. There they had been for nearly nine years and there they were likely to remain, in spite of Colonel Ogden's grumbling and Mrs. Ogden's nerves. For Leaside was cheap and the air suited Colonel Ogden's heart; anyhow there was no money to move, and nowhere in particular to go if they could move.

Of course there was Blumfield. Mrs. Ogden's sister Ann had married the now Bishop of Blumfield, but the Blanes were, or so the Ogdens thought, never quite sincere when they urged them to move nearer to them. They decided not to try crumb-gathering at the rich man's table in Blumfield.

It was her children's education that now worried Mrs. Ogden most. Not that she cared very much what they learnt; her fetish was how and where they learnt it. She had been a Routledge before her marriage, a fact which haunted her day and night. "Poor as rats, and silly proud as peacocks," someone had once described them. "We Routledges"--"The Routledges never do that"--"The Routledges never do this!"

True, Chesham had been sold up, and the admiral's portrait by Romney bought by the docile Bishop of Blumfield at the request of his wife Ann. True, Ann and Mary had been left penniless when their father, Captain Routledge, died of lung haemorrhage in India. True, Ann had been glad enough to marry her bishop, then a humble chaplain, while Mary followed suit with Major Ogden of The Buffs. True, their brother Henry had failed to distinguish himself in any way and had bequeathed nothing to his family but heavy liabilities when his haemorrhage removed him in the nick of time--true, all true, and more than true, but they were still Routledges! And Admiral Sir William still got his laurel wreaths on the anniversary of the battle. He had moved from the decaying walls of Chesham to the substantial walls of the bishop's palace, and perhaps he secretly liked the change--Ann his descendant did. In the humbler drawing-room at Leaside he received like homage; for there, in a conspicuous position, hung a print of the famous portrait, and every year when the great day came round, Mary, his other descendant, dutifully placed her smaller laurel wreath round the frame, and asked her friends to tea as tradition demanded.

"Once a Routledge always a Routledge," Mrs. Ogden was fond of saying on such occasions. And if the colonel happened to feel in a good temper he would murmur, "Fine old chap, Sir William; looks well in his laurels, Mary. Who did you say was coming in this afternoon?" But if on the other hand his heart had been troubling him, he might turn away with a scornful grunt. Then Mary, the ever tactless, would query, "Doesn't it look nice then, dear?" And once, only once, the colonel had said, "Oh, hell!"

The school at Seabourne was not for the Routledge clan, for to it went the offspring of the local tradespeople. Colonel Ogden was inclined to think that beggars couldn't be choosers, but Mary was firm. Weak in all else, she was a flint when her family pride was involved, a knight-errant bearing on high the somewhat tattered banner of Routledge. The colonel gave way; he would always have given way before a direct attack, but his wife had never guessed this. Even while she raised her spiritual battle-cry she thought of his weak heart and her conscience smote her, yet she risked even the colonel's heart on that occasion; Joan and Milly must be educated at home. The Routledges never sent their girls to school!

In the end, it was Colonel Ogden who solved the difficulty. He frequented the stiff little club house on the esplanade, and in this most unlikely place he heard of a governess.

Into the club would presently saunter old Admiral Bourne who lived at Glory Point, a lonely man with a passion for breeding fancy mice. He had a trick of pulling up short in the middle of the room, and peering over his spectacles with his pleasant blue eyes as if in search of someone. He was in search of someone, of some tolerant fellow member who would not be too obviously bored at the domestic vagaries of the mice, who constantly disappointed their owner by coming into the world the wrong colour. If Admiral Bourne could be said to have an ambition, then that ambition was to breed a mouse that should eclipse all previous records.

Other members would begin to collect, Sir Robert Loo of Moor Park, whose shooting provided the only alternative to golf for the male population of Seabourne. There was Major Boyle, languid and malarial, with a doleful mind, especially in politics; and Mr. Pearson, the bank manager, who had found his way into the club when its funds were alarmingly low, and had been bitterly resented ever since. Then there was Mr. Rodney the solicitor, and last but not least, General Brooke, Colonel Ogden's hated rival.

General Brooke looked like Colonel Ogden, that was the trouble; they were often mistaken for each other in the street. They were both under middle height, stout, with grey hair and small blue eyes, they both wore their moustaches clipped very short, and they both had auxiliary whiskers in their ears. Added to this they both wore red neckties and loose, light home-spuns, and they both had wives who knitted their waistcoats from wool bought at the local shop. They both wore brown boots with rubber studded soles, and, worst of all, they both wore brown Homburg hats, so that their backs looked exactly alike when they were out walking. The situation was aggravated by the fact that neither could accuse the other of imitation. To be sure General Brooke had lived in Seabourne eighteen months longer than Colonel Ogden and had never been seen in any other type of garments; but then, when Colonel Ogden had arrived in his startling replicas, his clothes had been obviously old and had certainly been worn quite as long as the general's.

It was Mr. Rodney, the solicitor, who offered Colonel Ogden a solution to his wife's educational difficulties. Mr. Rodney, it seemed, had a sister just down from Cambridge. She had come to Seabourne to keep house for him, but she wanted to get some work, and he thought she would probably be glad to teach the Ogdens' little girls for a few hours every day. The colonel engaged Elizabeth Rodney forthwith.

THE schoolroom at Leaside was dreary. You came through the front door into a narrow passage covered with brown linoleum and decorated with trophies from Indian bazaars. On one side stood a black carved wood table bearing a Benares tray used for visiting cards, beside the table stood an elephant's foot, adapted to take umbrellas. To your right was the drawing-room, to your left the dining-room, facing you were the stairs carpeted in faded green Brussels. If you continued down the passage and passed the kitchen door, you came to the schoolroom. Leaside was a sunny house, so that the schoolroom took you by surprise; it was an unpleasant room, always a little damp, as the walls testified.

It was spring and the gloom of the room was somewhat dispelled by the bright bunch of daffodils which Elizabeth had brought with her for the table. At this table she sat with her two pupils; there was silence except for the scratching of pens. Elizabeth Rodney leant back in her chair; what light there was from the window slanted on to her strong brown hair that waved persistently around her ears. Her eyes looked inattentive, or rather as if their attention were riveted on something a long way away; her fine, long hands were idly folded in her lap; she had a trick of folding her hands in her lap. She was so neat that it made you uncomfortable, so spotless that it made you feel dirty, yet there was something in the set of her calm mouth that made you doubtful. Calm it certainly was, and yet ... one could not help wondering....

Just now she looked discouraged; she sighed.

"Finished!" said Joan, passing over her copy-book. Elizabeth examined it. "That's all right."

Milly toiled, the pen blotted, tears filled her eyes, one fell and made the blot run.

"Thirty-six," said Elizabeth. "Now we'll go out."

They got up and put away the books. Outside, the March wind blew briskly, the sea glared so that it hurt your eyes, and around the coast the white cliffs curved low and distinct.

"Let's go up there," said Elizabeth, pointing to the cliffs.

"Joan, Joan!" called Mrs. Ogden from the drawing-room window, "where is your hat?"

"Oh, not to-day, Mother. I like the feel of the wind in my hair."

"Nonsense, come in and get your hat."

Joan sighed. "I suppose I must," she said. "You two go on, I'll catch you up." She ran in and snatched a tam-o'-shanter from the hall table.

"Don't forget my knitting wool, dear."

"No, Mother, but we were going on to the downs."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet