Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

excitement; Cook was saying that she had never regretted the inadequacy of the kitchen arrangements of Sixty-four until this moment; and Annie was bracing herself for the real effort, the opening of the door to Madame Flauve. The only calm person was Stella who, clasping a rubber doll with tight curly rubber hair and a stomachic squeak, chanted to herself the saga of Madame Flauve’s arrival.

At two minutes past ten Michael said somebody was coming up the steps, and a ring confirmed his assertion. The door was opened. Madame Flauve was heard rubbing her boots on the salve of the mat, was heard putting away her umbrella in the peacock-blue china umbrella-stand, was heard enquiring for Mrs. Fane and was announced inaudibly by Annie.

Michael’s heart sank when he beheld a fat young Frenchwoman with a bilious complexion and little pig’s eyes and a dowdy black mantle and a common black hat. As for Nurse, she sniffed quite audibly and muttered an insincere hope that Madame Flauve would find everything to her liking. The governess answered in the thick voice of one who is always swallowing jujubes that without a doubt she would find everything, and presently Nurse left the room with many a backward glance of contempt towards Madame Flauve.

When the lessons began (or rather before they began) a timetable was drawn up by Madame Flauve:

Monday { 10⁠–⁠11 French 2:30⁠–⁠4 Walk 11⁠–⁠12 Geography 12⁠–⁠1 History Tuesday { 10⁠–⁠11 Geography 2:30⁠–⁠4 Walk 11⁠–⁠12 History 12⁠–⁠1 French Wednesday { 10⁠–⁠11 History 2:30⁠–⁠4 Walk 11⁠–⁠12 Geography 12⁠–⁠1 French Thursday { 10⁠–⁠11 French 2:30⁠–⁠4 Walk 11⁠–⁠12 History 12⁠–⁠1 Geography Friday { 10⁠–⁠11 Geography 2:30⁠–⁠4 Walk 11⁠–⁠12 French 12⁠–⁠1 History

Michael, when he saw the programme of his work, felt much depressed. It seemed to lack variety and he was not very much cheered up to hear that at meals only French would be spoken. Those meals were dreadful. At first Nurse and Stella were present, but when Nanny found that Madame wanted to teach Stella the French for knife and fork, she declined to have dinner downstairs any longer, and Michael and Madame Flauve were left to dine tête-à-tête on dull food and a languishing conversation.

“Madam indeed,” Nurse would sniff, when the governess had left after tea, “I never heard of such a thing in all my life. Madam! A fine Madam!”

“What an imperence,” agreed Mrs. Frith. “Fancy, a ordinary volgar thing like that to go calling herself Madam, whatever shall we come to?”

“It does seem a cheek, don’t it?” said Annie.

“I never!” Cook gasped. “I never! Madam! Well, I could almost laugh at the sauce of it. And all that cleaning as you might say for a person as isn’t a scrap better than you and me.”

“Oh, I’ve written to Mrs. Fane,” said Nurse. “I said there must be some mistake been made. Oh, yes, a mistake⁠—must be a mistake.”

Michael did not much enjoy the walks with his governess. He was always taken to a secondhand furniture-shop in the Hammersmith Road, not a pleasant old furniture-shop with Toby mugs and stuffed birds and coins; but a barrack full of red washing-stands and white-handled chests of drawers. Madame Flauve informed him that she was engaged in furnishing at that moment, and would immediately show him a locket with the portrait of her husband inset. Michael could not gain any clear idea of what M. Flauve was like, since all that remained was a nebulous profile smothered by a very black moustache. Madame Flauve told him that M. Flauve was “tout-à-fait charmant, mais charmant, mon petit. Il était si aimable, si gentil et d’un cœur très très bon.” Michael grew very tired of being jostled outside the furniture-shop every afternoon, while his governess grubbed around the ugly furniture and argued with the man about the prices. The only article she ever bought was a commode, which so violently embarrassed Michael that he blushed the whole way home. But Madame Flauve often made him blush and would comment upon subjects not generally mentioned except by Mrs. Frith, and even by her only in a spirit of hearty coarseness that did not make Michael feel ashamed like this Frenchwoman’s suggestion of the nasty. He was on one occasion very much disgusted by her remarks on the inside of an egg that was slightly set. Yet while he was disgusted, his curiosity was stimulated by the information imparted, and he made further enquiries from Nurse that evening. Nanny was horrified, and said plainly that she considered this governess no better than a low beast and that she should write accordingly to Mrs. Fane.

After a month or two Michael was sent back to school in the morning, though the afternoon walks still continued for a time. When Michael returned to the Misses Marrow, he was promoted to the class above the Kindergarten and was set to learn the elements of Latin in a desultory and unpractical way, that is to say he was made to learn⁠—

Nominative, mensa, a table Vocative, mensa, O table Accusative, mensam, a table

and the rest of the unintelligible rigmarole. He had no clear notion what Latin was, and so far as he could make out nobody else at the Miss Marrows’ school had any clearer notion. Indeed, the only distinct addition to his knowledge of life was gained from Vernon Brown who with great ingenuity had hollowed out a cork and by the insertion of several pins in the front had made of it a miniature cage in which he kept a fly. All the other boys were much impressed by Vernon Brown’s achievement, and very soon they all came to school with flies captive in excavated corks. Michael longed to be like these bigger boys and pined for a cage. One day Edward Arnott gave him one, and all the rest of that day Michael watched the fly trying to escape. When he showed it to Madame Flauve, she professed herself shocked by the cruelty of it and begged him to release the fly, asserting that she would find him a substitute which would deceive all the other boys. Michael agreed to release his captive and the long-imprisoned fly walked painfully out of his cell. Then Madame Flauve chipped