Michael Cox by The Glass of Time (mobi) Read Free Book Online

Thornhaugh could not correct, the acquirement of factual knowledge was ever delightful to me throughout my childhood, and the habit has remained with me. When I was young, it was another kind of game for me to play, and I did not think it at all strange that a little girl could derive as much pleasure from it as from playing with dolls, or skipping with a rope about the garden.
It might be inferred from these brief remarks that I spent a lonely and sequestered childhood in the Maison de l’Orme, with only my books for company; but I was not without playmates, although they were always carefully selected by Madame.
My especial friend was a girl of about my own age, Amélie Verron, whose father, a government official, was our nearest neighbour in the Avenue d’Uhrich. Monsieur Verron was a widower, and I think Madame felt obliged to demonstrate neighbourly concern with respect to his only child. Every weekday morning, Amélie and I would be taken for walks together in the Bois by my nurse, whilst on Sunday afternoons she and her father would take tea with us.
Amélie was a quiet, nervous child, of a delicate constitution, always content for me to take the lead in our games. When she died, at the age of fourteen, she left a void in my young life that no one else was able to fill. One of our favourite games was to set out a little school-room in the salon or, on fine days, under the chestnut-tree in the garden. Amélie, wearing an expression of the most serious concentration, would sit on a little stool, surrounded by her fellow pupils – a mute company of assorted rag-dolls and stuffed animals – and write slowly and solemnly on a slate, like the obedient little disciple that she was, as I marched up and down in front of her – swathed in a trailing black table-cloth, to mimic a scholar’s gown – loudly dictating the names of the Merovingian kings (very much, I am sure, in the manner of Mr Thornhaugh), or some item of knowledge recently gleaned, either from my tutor or from my own reading. I blush now to think how insufferable I must have been; but dear Amélie never complained.
From this school-room game I soon discovered that I had a great liking – and, I think I may claim, a distinct talent – for public declamation, and began to conceive the notion (much to Mr Thornhaugh’s amusement) that I might grow up to be an actress. To indulge this predilection, a little stage, complete with a gaily painted pasteboard proscenium arch and red plush curtains, was erected for me in one of the upstairs rooms. Here – before an appreciative audience of Madame, Mr Thornhaugh, and Amélie – I would recite long passages from Paradise Lost (a particular favourite of Mr Thornhaugh’s), which I had learned by heart, or act out whole scenes from Molière or Shakespeare, taking each part, and giving each one an individual voice. I could not imagine then how these childhood performances, and my ability to hide my true self behind an assumed character, would eventually stand me in good stead for playing the part of maid to Lady Tansor.
I do not wish to give the impression that I was a precocious child, for I am sure that I was not. I was, however, given every opportunity, as well as the means, particularly by Mr Thornhaugh, to use the abilities that God had given me to the full, and I took them.
I was often disobedient and naughty – sometimes so naughty that it exhausted even Madame’s patience. Then I would be exiled to a bare attic room, containing only a bed, a chair, and a three-legged table with a jug of water on it, where I had to spend the term of my sentence without books, pen or paper, or any other diversion, until I was released.
I always regretted my transgressions – indeed, would often hate myself for them. The truth was that I could not bear to see Madame or Mr Thornhaugh angered by my bad behaviour. Consequently, when discovered in my misdeeds, I would display a certain inventiveness (I will not say deviousness) in