LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 254, 5 April 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CHARLES VAN RHEYN.

(From the Argosy.) I shall always say it was a singular thing that I should chance to go back to school that time the day before the quarter opened. Singular, because I heard and saw more of the boy I am going to tell, of than I otherwise might have heard and seen. I was present at his arrival: and I was present at his—well, let us say, at his departure. Dr Frost was puzzling over a letter from France. Turning its pages over and back again, and staring at it through his spectacles, he at last brought it to me. ‘ You are a pretty good French scholar, Johnny; can you read this ? I can’t, I confess. But the paper’s so thin, and the ink so pale, and the writing so small, I could scarcely see it if it were English.” As he said, the ink was pale, and it was a frightfully small and cramped handwriting. The letter was dated Rouen, and was signed curtly. ‘ Van Rheyn,’French fashion, without the writer’s Christian name. Monsieur Van Rheyn wrote to say, that he was about to consign his son, Charles Aberleigh Van Rheyn, to Dr Frost’s care, and that he would arrive quickly after the letter, having already departed on his journey under the charge of a ‘gentilhomme Anglais.’ It added that the son would bring credentials with him ; that he spoke some English, and was partly of English descent, through his mother the late Madame Van Rheyn, nee Aberleigh. ‘ Rather a summary way of consigning a pupil to my charge,’ remarked Dr Frost. ‘Aberleigh?—Aberleigh? She must have been one of the Aberleighs of Upton. Perhaps Hall knows ?’ ‘ There’s none of the Aberleighs left now to know, sir,’ said Hall, when questioned. ‘ There never was but two—after the old mother died; Miss Aberleigh and Miss Emma Aberleigh. Good fortunes the young ladies had, sir, and both of them, I remember, married on the same day. Mias Aberleigh to Captain Scott, and Miss Emma to a French gentleman, MosseerVon Rheyn.’ ‘I should think, by the name he was Dutch —or Flemish ; not French,’ remarked the Doctor.

* Anyway, sir, he was said to be French,’ remarked Hall. ‘ A dark, sallow gentleman who wore a braided coat. The young ladies never came back to their home after the wedding day, and the place was sold. Captain Scott sailed with his wife for Injia, and Mosseer Von Rheyn took Miss Emma off to his house in France. Not long ago, I heard it said that poor Miss Emma was dead—Mrs Von Rheyn, this is. A nice quiet girl, she was.’

* Then I conclude the new pupil, advised to me, must be the son of Mr Van Rheyn and Miss Emma Aberleigh,’ remarked the Doctor. ‘ You must help to make things pleasant for him, Johnny: it will be a change at first from his own home and country. Do you remember that other French boy we had here?’ I did. And the remembrance made me laugh. He used to lament every day that he had not a plate of soup to dine off, and say the meat was tough. Strolling out at the front gates in the course of the morning, I caught sight of the first boy. He was walking up from the Plough and Harrow Inn, with a large trunk behind him. And of all queer figures that boy looked the queerest. His trousers and vest were nankeen, his coat was a kind of open blouse, and flew out behind him like a big round tail; the hat he wore was a great big tall chimney-pot with a wide brim. Off went the hat, with a bow and a flourish of the arm, as he reached me and the gates. ‘ I ask your pardon, sir. This is, I believe, the pension of Mister the Doctor Frost?’ The French accent, the French manners, the French turn of the words told me who it was. For a minute or two I really could not answer for staring at him. He seemed to have arrived with a shaved head, as if jus out of jail, or of brain fever. Really and truly it was the most remarkable figure ever seen out of a picture. I could not guess his age exactly: something perhaps between twelve and fourteen. He was slender and upright, and to all appearance strong. * I think you must be Charles Van Rheyn,’ I said then, holding out my hand to welcome him. ‘ Dr Frost is expecting you. ’ As he put his hand into mine, such a glad brightness came into his rather large and honest grey eyes, that I liked him from that hour, in spite of the clothes and the freckled face and the shorn head. He had crossed from Folkestone by the night boat, and the gentleman, who was his escort to London, had there put him into the proper train to come on to his destination. Dr Frost was at the window, and came to the door. Van Rheyn stood still when within a yard of him, took his hat off with the most respectable air, and bowed his head down to the ground. He had evidently been brought up with a reverence for pastors and masters. The doctor shook hands : and Van Rheyn gave him a large, square letter sealed with two flaming red seals and a coat of arms. It contained a draft for a good sum of money in advance of the first three months’ payment, and some pages of closelywritten matter in the crabbed hand of Monsieur Van Rheyn. ‘ Are you a Protestant or a Roman Catholic ?’ questioned Dr Frost. ‘ I am Protestant, sir : the same that my mother was. We attended the Eglise of Monsieur le Pastor Mens, of the Culte Evangelique. ’ ‘ This young gentleman is the son of the Miss Emma Aberleigh you once knew, Hall,’ spoke the Doctor to her, with a view no doubt to put her on good terms with the new pupil. ‘ Yes, sir,’ she answered. * He favours his mamma about the eyes.’ ‘ She must have had very nice eyes,’ I put in. ‘ And so she had,’ said Van Rheyn, looking at me gratefully. ‘ Thank you for saying it. I wish you could have known her!’ * And might I ask, sir, what has become of the other Miss Aberleigh?’ asked Hall of Van Rheyn. * The young lady who went off to Injia with hei husband on the weddingday.’ ‘ You would say my Aunt Margaret? She is well. She and the Major and the children will make the voyage to Europe next year.’ Van Rheyn said he should like to unpack his box, and we went upstairs together. Growing confidential over the unpacking, he gave me scraps of information touching his home and family, the mention of one item leading to another. His baptismal name in full, he said, was Charles Jean Aberleigh; his father’s y as Jean Marie. Their home was a tret joli

chateau close to Rouen: in five minutes you could walk thither. It was all much changed since his mother died (he seemed to have loved her with a fervent love and to revere her memory); the last thing he did on coming away for England was to take some flowers to her grave. It was thought in Rouen that his father was going to make a second marriage with one of the Demoiselles de Tocqueville, whom his Aunt Claribelle did not like. His Aunt Claribelle, his father’s sister, had come to live at the chateau when his mother died ; but if that Theresine de Tocqueville came into the house she would quit it. The Demoiselles de Tocqueville had hardly any dot —which would be much against the marriage, Aunt Claribelle thought, and bad for his father; because when he (Charles) should be the age of twenty-one, all the money came to him ; it had been his mother’s and was so settled ; and his father’s property was but very small. Of course he should wish his father to keep always as much as he pleased, but Aunt Claribelle said the English trustees would be sure not to allow that. His mother had wished him to finish his education in England and to go to one of the two colleges to which English gentlemen went. ‘ Halloa, here comes old Fontaine!’ I interrupted at this juncture, happening to see him from - the window. Van Rheyn looked up from his shirts, which he was counting. He seemed to have the tidiest ways in the world. ‘ You can talk away with him in your native tongue as much as you will, Van Rheyn.’ * But I have come here to speak the English tongue, not the French,” debated he, looking at me seriously. ‘My father wishes me to speak and read it without any strange accent; and I wish it also. ’ ‘ You speak it very well already.’ ‘ But you can tell that it is not my native tongue—that I am a foreigner.’ *Of course, What are you to be, Van Rheyn ?’ ‘ I need not be anything : I have enough footune to bea rentier—l don’t know what you call that in English ; it means a gentleman who lives on his money. But I wish, myself, to be an English priest.’ ‘An English priest! Do you mean a parson ?’ . ‘ Yes, I mean that. So you see I must learn the English tongue perfectly. My mother used to talk to me about the priests in her own land ’ ‘ Parsons, Von Rheyn.’ ‘ I beg your pardon : I forgot. And I fear I have much caught up the French names for things since my mother died. It was neither priest nor parson she used to call the English ministers. ’ ‘Clergymen, perhaps?’ * That was it. She said the clergymen were all good men, and she should like me to be one clergyman. In winter, when it was cold and she had some fire in her chamber, I used to sit up there with her, after coming home from classe, and we talked together, our two selves. I should have much money, she said, when I grew to be a man, and could lead an idle life. But she would not like that; she wanted me to be a good man, and to go Heaven when I died, where she would be ; and she thought if I were a clergyman I should have serious thoughts always. So I wish to be one clergyman.’

He said all this with the greatest simplicity and composure, just as he might have spoken of going for a ride. Indeed, he seemed to be of a thoroughly simple, straightforward nature.

*lt might involve your living over here. Van Rheyn; once you were in Orders.’

‘Yes, I know. Papa would not mind. England was mamma’s country, and she loved it. There was more peace in England than in France, she thought. ’ ‘ I say, she must have been a good mother, Van Rheyn. ’ In a moment his grey eyes were shining at me through a mist of tears. ‘ Oh, she was so good, so good! You can never know. If she had live I should never have had sorrow. ’ What did she die of?’

‘ Ah, I cannot tell. She was well in the morning, and she was dead at night. Not that she was strong ever. It was one Dimanche. We had been to the office, she and I ’ ‘ What office ?’

‘ Oh, pardon—l forget I am speaking English. I mean to church. Monsieur Mons had preached : and we were walking along the street towards home afterwards, mamma talking to mo about the sermon, which had been a very holy one, when we met the Aunt Claribelle who had come into the town for high mass at St Ouen. Mamma asked her to come home and dine with us! and she yes, but she must first go to say bon-jour to old Madame Soubitez. As she parted with us, there was suddenly a great outcry. It was fete at Rouen that Sunday. Some bands of music were to play on the estrade in the public garden, competing for a prize, consequently the streets were crowded. We looked back at the noise, and saw many horses, without riders, galloping along towards us ; men, running after them, shouting and calling; and the people, mad with fright, tumbling over one another in effort to get away. Later we heard that these horses, frightened by something, had broken out of an hotel postyard. Well, mamma gave just a cry of fear and held my hand tighter as we set off to run with the rest, the horses stamping wildly after us. But the people pushed between us, and 1 lost her. She was at home before me, and was sitting on the side of the fountain, inside the chateau entrance gate, her face all white and bine, as she clung to the nearest lion with both hands. I had never seen her look so. Come in, mamma, I said, and take a little glass of cordial: but she did not not answer me, and did not stir. I called one of the servants, and by-and-by she got a little breath again, and went into the house leaning upon both of us, and so up to her chamber. Quite immediately papa came home : he always went in town to his club on the Sunday mornings, and he ran for Monsieur Petit; she medecin—the doctor. By seven o’clock in the evening, mamma was dead. ’ To be continued.