University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.

Every schoolgirl now acquires a certain facility
at talking French. Mrs. Hartell was educated before
this was considered one of the necessaries of
polite life, and she set an undue value upon it.
She went abroad, to use a commercial phrase,
without capital, and consequently returned as poor
as she went. In plainer language, she acquired a
taste only for that to which art gives a false gloss
and fashion a fictitious value, a love for the frivolities
that float on the surface of society in the
French capital, and for the usages that belong to a
highly artificial state of society; usages about as
well adapted to our stage in the progress of civilization
as an ottoman is to the growing, bounding
child, or a lord-mayor's coach to our western hunting-grounds.
Instead of training her children to
the vigour necessary to endure and resist our
rugged climate, she immured them alternately in
the nursery and in a French boarding-school. Instead
of allowing their persons to expand in obedience
to the laws of nature, the beautiful work of
God was marred, and the frames fearfully and
wonderfully made were given over to French milliners
and tailors. But worse than this: instead of
learning to speak their own homely Saxon, in the
phrases consecrated by the domestic usages of

centuries, they must first lisp in foreign accents,
taught by French servants. Even Mrs. Hartell
might have perceived the folly of a Frenchwoman
permitting her children to take their first lessons
on that most delicate, “most cunning instrument,”
language, from an American servant; but it never
occurred to her that the care of the French servant
teacher was worse, inasmuch as the opportunities
of education, moral and intellectual, for the lower
classes abroad are inferior to those accessible to
parallel classes at home. But, unhappily, these
were not Mrs. Hartell's most serious mistakes. She
never even thought of preparing the minds and manners
of her children for the state of society in which
they were to live, or of adapting her own conduct to
the actual duties of her condition. Among other
necessary effects of this fatuity was the disorder
and misrule which in our domiciliary visits fall
more particularly under our observation.

Mr. Hartell was a man of good moral instincts,
but very little moral cultivation. He but half concealed
from his children his contempt for their
mother, and not at all his detestation of her French
favourites. He very early took a liking to Lucy
Lee. He perceived that his boy, his idol, soon
preferred her to Adéle, and he knew the preferences
of a child are unerring. He unwarily expressed
in Adéle's presence his superior confidence in
Lucy. Lucy's sweet qualities, and thoroughly
tried they were, won the love of the little girls,
which they constantly manifested, much to their
mother's annoyance, by preferring Lucy on all occasions
to Adéle. All this, of course, galled Adéle;
but while her mistress was her champion she felt

quite safe, and she was not insensible to the advantage
of having a young girl of Lucy's capacity
and good temper, upon whom she might impose
her duties without her indolent mistress giving
herself the trouble to reprove, or even to notice her
injustice. But there were occasions when she
felt the presence of this faithful girl to be not only
inconvenient, but dangerous. On one of these
Lucy returned unexpectedly from Mrs. Hartell's
sister's, where she had been sent to aid in the care
of a sick child. The child had died suddenly, and
Lucy, on re-entering the nursery, found Adéle at a
tête-à-tête petit souper with a dear friend. Both
master and mistress were out, and the keys had
been left in trust with Adéle. The table was
spread with the choicest luxuries of the pantry.
After Adéle recovered from the first shock of Lucy's
appearance, she resumed her conversation with
her visiter in French with apparent ease, and with
unwonted courtesy begged Lucy to join them.
Lucy declined, and refused a glass of Burgundy,
which Adéle said was “the best thing in the world
to raise the spirits after seeing one little child die.”
When Adéle's friend was gone, and the relics of
the supper removed, she said, as if soliloquizing,
“Oh, how generous madame is—she say to me
always, `Adéle, do with mine as if it were yours.'
Ah, she is one angel, madame!”

Lucy understood the drift of this. No one likes
to appear a passive dupe; and, nettled at Adéle's
thinking her so, she said, in allusion to the Burgundy,
“Does Mr. Hartell tell you, Adéle, to do
with his as if it were your own?”

“Very impertinent, miss! just so you always

are. Madame know so well as I your little arts
to get the blind of Mr. Hartell—bad appearance in
the young girls to get the blind of the lady's husband.
I have madame's leave—monsieur is quite
another thing—you will not tell him?” she added,
softening her tone. Lucy considered for a moment,
and then remembering her mother's rule,
whenever she doubted as to her course, to go
straight forward, she said, “Adéle, you know that
I know you are abusing Mrs. Hartell's confidence.”
Adéle's eyes absolutely glowed with rage, but Lucy
courageously proceeded. “Did I not hear you tell
Mrs. Hartell how much sewing you had done the
two evenings you were out at balls when she was
gone, and every stitch I had taken myself?”

“You could not hear that—we talk alway
French.”

“I heard and understood perfectly—half Mrs.
Hartell's words are English, and I have learned
many French words from you and the children.
Perhaps you think I did not understand your winking
at me, when you showed Mrs. Hartell as your
work the stitches I had taken up on Ophelia's
stocking, nor your offering me the pink cravat
when Mrs. Hartell had left the nursery?”

“So it was to insult me you did not accept it?”

“No; but I would not accept a free gift from
one I did not like, and certainly not a bribe.”

Adéle had begun with a high blustering tone.
She now began to feel how powerful are the
weapons of truth, even wielded by a child; and
softening down, she said, in a deprecating voice,
“You, my dear, mean always right, but in one
such young person the judgment is not ripe!”

“If my judgment is not ripe, Adéle, my eyesight
is very clear, and I made no mistake when I unlocked
Mrs. Hartell's emerald earring for you. You
would not have asked me to do it if you could have
done it yourself.”

“Mon Dieu! mon enfant, is there but one emerald
earring in the world?—that was the earring of
my friend Matilda!”

“I do not believe it, Adéle, any more than I believe
those stockings embroidered with rosebuds
which I saw on Mrs. Hartell's feet last Sunday,
and which are now on yours, belong to Matilda!
I am not deceived, Adéle, and I fear I am wrong
in not undeceiving Mrs. Hartell.”

“You will not dare to say to madame,” cried
Adéle, bursting into a stormy flood of tears, “that
I am thief and liar—madame will believe not—
madame know very well the American servant hate
all the French peoples.”

“It is true she may not believe me, but that is
no reason why I should not do right. I hate to
turn telltale—I have no friend to advise me; but
my conscience, a safe adviser, tells me I ought not
to stand silently by and see my employer's confidence
abused.”

“Then you tell?” asked Adéle, alarmed and enraged.

“I must, if you go on in this way—but if you
stop here I will never tell what is past.” Lucy
paused for Adéle's reply. She was too cunning to
make a promise that implied confession. “I never
will bind myself to one such little girl as you—but
remember, you have promised not to tell till you
suspect more.” She evidently was abashed, but

not penitent. She was hardened by the long and
unexposed practice of evil and imboldened by Mrs.
Hartell's silly confidence and partiality. Perhaps
Adéle had been singularly unfortunate; we leave
to others to decide whether her case was a rare
one; but in many years' service in her own country
—and with sorrow we add in ours—she had never
had one employer who had regarded it as a duty
to attempt to reform the faults, and enlighten the
moral sense, and strengthen the feeble virtue of her
inferior and dependant. She had never had one
who considered her a member of the same great
family with herself, a creature of the same passions
and affections, who, after a few flying years, when
the relations instituted as a trial to the virtue of
employers and employed are past, must appear
with her at the same tribunal. Mrs. Hartell
winked at her faults to profit by her faculties; and,
instead of leading her back to truth and duty, urged
her forward in her devious course by the example
of her own vanities and self-indulgence.

Lucy knew she had provoked a powerful adversary
who would do battle with the “sword and
the shield,” but she was strong and tranquil in the
consciousness of having done right. Before going
to bed she offered Adéle her hand, saying, “Be
sure, Adéle, I wish to be your friend; and it shall
not be my fault if we are not the better and happier
for living together.”

“Mais—c'est un bon enfant! She is a good
creature!” exclaimed Adéle, yielding to a good
impulse and returning the pressure of Lucy's hand.