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I had breakfasted with Mrs Causand in the morning after Rip's discomfiture, and then went to prosecute my studies in the schoolroom. This was the first time that my tutor and I had met since his rebuff. Monsieur Cherfeuil had not yet taken his place at his desk.
When Mrs Cherfeuil lived in that house, she took care that we should always have a home of our own, fire in the grate, and a loaf in the cupboard she had me sent to school but now she is gone!" "Gone! where? with her husband?" "Don't you know, sir," said she, with a quiet solemnity, that made me shudder with dreadful anticipations. "If you will come with me, I will show you."
In all things he was the antithesis of Mr Root. The latter was large, florid, and decidedly handsome Mr Cherfeuil was little, sallow, and more than decidedly ugly. Mr Root was worldly wise, and very ignorant; Mr Cherfeuil, a fool in the world, and very learned.
No; let us bring it to an abrupt conclusion, by saying, in a few words, that Mr Root was English, Mr Cherfeuil French; that the one had a large school, and the other a little one and that both were immeasurably great men in their own estimation though not universally so in that of others.
All the care and attention that the most maternal of hearts could bestow upon me were mine; yet there was no approach to anything like familiarity on the part of Mrs Cherfeuil. It would be amusing work to write a biography of some of the most remarkable ushers. They seem to be the bats of the social scale. Gentlemen will not own them, and the classes beneath reject them.
Monsieur Cherfeuil opening the door at this moment, and hearing a great noise, and not perceiving him who ought to have repressed it, for the boys standing round what remained of him with us, it was concealed from the worthy pedagogue, who exclaimed, "Vat a noise be here! Vere ist Mr Reepraaptong?" "Just stepped down below, to Miss Brocade, in the breakfast-parlour," I replied.
Before dinner my schoolfellows had begged off one-half of the task. Mrs Cherfeuil, at dinner, begged off one-half of that half: when things had gone thus far, Mrs Causand interfered, and argued for a commutation of punishment; the more especially, as she thought an example ought to be made for so heinous an offence.
Mr Cherfeuil was, in himself, a mine of learning; but he delivered it out from the dark cavities of his mind, encumbered with so much ore, and in such misshaped masses, that it required another person to arrange for use what he was so lavish in producing.
Her senses were bewildered; and being quite at a loss to comprehend the miracle, she had nothing else to do but faint away. When Monsieur Cherfeuil entered, the simple and good-natured Gaul found his beloved manageress apparently lifeless at his feet, covered with the debris of his ceiling, and the wooden leg of his usher slightly tremulous above him.
Thank God, I can always ask Mrs Cherfeuil." At that name, a smile, no longer bitter, but deeply melancholy, and almost sweet, came over his effeminate features. But it lasted not long. That smile, like a few tones of his voice, seemed so familiar to me. Was I one of two existences, the consciousness of the one nearly, but not quite, blotting out the other?
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