Alone In Paris

Chapter One ~ 1892-1

Chapter One ~ 1892As the train began to slow down to enter the Station, the Governess in charge of the three girls in the carriage turned to Una.

“There will be somebody to meet you?” she asked in her prim yet rather indecisive voice.

“Yes, I am sure that my father will be there,” Una replied. “I wrote to him a week ago, saying that I would be on this train.”

“That is all right then,” the Governess said with a note of relief in her voice.

When they had left for France, she had obviously been apprehensive at having three young ladies in her care, but Una had been so helpful and so polite that Mademoiselle had warmed to her and in fact she had found the journey far more pleasant because she was with them.

The other two girls, daughters of the Comte de Beausoir, were high-spirited and obviously bored with the Mademoiselle who had taken care of them in the holidays.

The youngest of the Comte’s family, Marie-Celeste, who was only fourteen, was always mimicking the Governess behind her back and was a continual cause of anxiety.

Una had sensed that Mademoiselle, who was getting on in years, was clinging to her position in the Comte’s household simply because it was familiar and she had no wish to start all over again with another family.

She was therefore far more lax with her charges than she should have been and Marie-Celeste had made the long journey one of anxiety from the moment they had left Italy.

Now they were arriving in Paris and Una was in fact more sorry to say goodbye to the woman with the anxious face than to the two girls, who had been fellow pupils with her at the Convent where she had spent the last three years.

It seemed strange, she thought, that having not heard from her father for so long, he should suddenly have sent her a telegram in response to her last letter, saying,

“Come at once! No. 9 Rue de l’Abreuville, Montmartre, Paris.”

She had taken the telegram to the Mother Superior, who had frowned at the address.

“Your father lives in Montmartre?” she had enquired.

“Yes, Reverend Mother,” Una replied. “As you know, he is an artist.”

The Reverend Mother pressed her lips together as if it was an effort not to say what she thought not only of artists but of Montmartre itself.

“I wrote to Papa, Reverend Mother,” Una said gently, “and told him that now that I am eighteen, the money that Mama left for my education has come to an end. I asked him what he would wish me to do.”

“And this is his response!” the Mother Superior said with a somewhat disdainful glance at the telegram lying in front of her.

“It will be nice to be with Papa again,” Una said, “and I am too old to be at school.”

“I do not like to think of any pupil of mine and certainly no one of your age, living in Montmartre,” the Mother Superior said.

She looked at Una as she spoke and thought that she could say a great deal more on the subject.

It was impossible to think of anyone so beautiful and so attractive as the girl facing her mixing with artists, dancers, and the scum of Paris, who, all the world knew, inhabited the part that had become a symbol of everything most shocking to the bourgeoisie.

All good Catholics knew that a magnificent Church dedicated to the Sacred Heart had been built on the hill that overlooked Paris and was in fact in the very centre of the artists’ quarter.

But that in itself was not enough to whitewash the tales of the dancing halls, cabarets,and other dubious places of amusement that were a byword over the whole of Europe.

But this was something that the Mother Superior could not discuss with the girl who faced her.

All she knew was that every instinct within her wished to prevent Una from travelling to Paris to stay with her father.

But Una was too old to stay on in the Convent, which was actually a Seminary for the Education of Young Ladies and also, as Una herself knew, now that the money left by her mother had been spent, her education must come to an end.

The Mother Superior made it her policy never to pry into the background of her pupils, but she was well aware that Una’s circumstances were rather exceptional.

Apparently her mother had stipulated in her will that the whole of her small fortune should be expended on her daughter’s education and a month before she died she had written to the Convent of Notre Dame in Florence asking for particulars.

She had learnt that it was not only the most fashionable place for the daughters of gentlefolk to be educated, but also that the tuition which they offered there was exceptional in an age when even the richest families considered that the education of their daughters was of little importance.

French girls were in fact better provided for than the English and the majority of the pupils at the Convent of Notre Dame were French and Italian.

There were a few English girls, but, because their elementary education had been so inadequate before they arrived, they were usually placed in far lower classes for their age than Una had been.

She was exceptionally intelligent and now the Mother Superior wondered to what use her brain would be put in the years ahead.

She had always thought that on the whole artists were scruffy in their appearance and without any qualifications except their skill in painting.

She had, however, learnt that Una’s father did not come into the usual category of painters who frequented Florence and other places rich in artistic treasures.

Julius Thoreau had served in the Grenadier Guards before he had made painting his profession and left England to live in France.

The Mother Superior had never seen any of his pictures, but she had noted an occasional mention of them, not in the artistic reviews, which she never read, but in the more conventional and respectable newspapers, which occasionally referred to exhibitions and the new trend in painting.

In the back of the Mother Superior’s mind was the idea that Julius Thoreau was just a gentleman enjoying the role of a dilettante in the world of art.

She could only hope now, as she looked at his daughter, that he would realise his responsibilities.

He could at least move from Montmartre back to the respectable address outside Paris from which he had written to her in the first place, when it was arranged that she should take Una as a pupil.

“I expect, Una,” she said now, in her quiet well modulated voice, “that your father will introduce you to Society and I am sure he will realise that to do so it would be impossible for you to live in Montmartre.”

“When Mama was alive,” Una replied, “we were very happy in the little house we had outside Paris. Papa used to paint in the garden, but when he went to Paris, Mama and I stayed at home.”

“That was, of course, very sensible,” the Mother Superior approved, “and I am sure your mother would wish you to persuade your father to return to such a life.”

Her voice was almost coaxing as she continued,

“After all, Una, I know that you like the country and you might in fact find it difficult, after being here for so long, to acclimatise yourself to living in a great City.”

Una did not reply.

She was thinking that it would be very exciting to see Paris.

She was sure that her father preferred the gaiety of the most notorious City in the world to the quiet rather dull existence they had lived in the past.

One of the reasons why her mother had not often gone to Paris was that they could not afford it.

Even when Una was a child she had learnt that they had to count every penny and that, if there was any money available, her father would spend it.

When she grew older, she learnt that the money in fact belonged to her mother.

“It was left to me by my grandfather,” she explained to Una, “and it was fortunate that he was so kind to me, because otherwise I cannot think what would have happened to us.”

Una was nearly fifteen before she learnt that her father had had to leave England and his Regiment because there had been a scandal.

She could never quite understand what had happened except that it concerned something very reprehensible that involved a senior Officer.

Whatever the reason, he had been obliged to hand in his resignation rather than face a Court Martial and he had left his own country in a fury and taken with him the girl he was secretly engaged to.

The reason for the secrecy was, Una learnt, that her mother’s father had absolutely forbidden the marriage.

When his daughter defied him and ran away with the man he considered a ‘bounder’, he cut her out of his life and had no further communication with her.

Una had therefore been born in France and because her mother talked so wistfully and often so unhappily about England, it always seemed to her to be a Paradise that one day, if she was fortunate, she might visit and be as happy there as her mother had been when she was a girl.

It was strange, when all the other girls had so many aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, that she should now have only her father.

She thought that as she had grown she had missed her mother year by year, even more than she had when she first died.

There were so many things she wanted to talk to her about and so many things she wanted to ask her.

But Mrs. Thoreau had died suddenly and unexpectedly and, almost before Una realised what had happened, she was in the Convent in Florence and mixing daily with more people than she had met in the last fifteen years.

Because she was so interested in everything that concerned her mother, she studied English, history and literature more assiduously than any other subjects.

She also made friends with the English girls and, because they came from aristocratic families, she learnt a great deal about the English way of living and compared it with that of the French and of the Italians.

Una was very perceptive in her contacts with people and the Mother Superior thought, as she looked at her, that there was something sensitive about her and a depth in that sensitivity that was unusual in a young girl.

‘I wonder what will happen to her,’ the Mother Superior thought to herself and then aloud she said,

“I hope you will write to me, Una, and tell me exactly what you are doing. Remember I shall always be your friend and ready to help you if it is at all possible.”

“You are very kind, Reverend Mother,” Una answered, “and I would like to thank you for all you have taught me and for all the help you have given me since I have been here.”

“Help?” the Mother Superior questioned.

“I realised when I came how ignorant I was about so many things,” Una said simply. “I don’t only mean academically.”

“I know what you mean, dear,” the Mother Superior said.

“I have often thought,” Una went on, “how fortunate it was that Mama chose this particular place for my education and left the money to pay the fees.”

She gave a little sigh.

“I like to think that I have not wasted any of my time, but I do realise how much more there is to learn and sometimes I feel very ignorant.”

The Mother Superior smiled.

“I can assure you, dear child, that you have learnt and thought much more than most of the girls who pass through my hands, but I am glad you realise there is still a great deal more for you to learn. Most girls of your age think only of getting married.”

“I should like to be married one day,” Una said, “but in the meantime I hope that I shall be able to help Papa.”

“I hope so too,” the Mother Superior said crisply.

When Una had left her, with renewed expressions of gratitude and a genuine note of sadness in her farewell, the Mother Superior had sat for some time without moving.