Family Sabbatical (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries) Read online

  There were many interesting things about the Grand Hotel and So Forth and So Forth besides the garden. For one thing, it reminded them a little bit of home, because it was large and old and had balconies and towers. Their house on College Avenue in Midwest City was large and old and had a tower, but of course it was not on quite such a majestic and universal scale as the hotel.

  The Ridgeways’ rooms were on the fourth floor of the Grand Hotel, and the family went up to them in a very small gilt elevator that looked something like a large bird cage. There was no regular operator, and whoever rode in the elevator had the fun of operating it himself. The elevator was called an ascenseur.

  “How very nice to have an ascenseur!” Mother exclaimed the first time they went up in it. “We might have had to walk up and down all these stairs every day!” And George began to think how pleasantly he could occupy himself on a rainy day by going up and down in the ascenseur, from top to bottom of the hotel, as many times as he liked.

  But the second time they wanted to go up in the ascenseur, they saw that attached to the bird-cage door was a neat printed card which said: L’ASCENSEUR NE MARCHE PAS.

  “But to marche means to walk,” said Susan, who was already beginning to learn some French.

  “It means,” said Father, “that the elevator is not walking today.”

  “But it means that we are,” said Mother.

  One never knew from day to day whether the ascenseur would “march” or not. Sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t. It added a good deal to the interest and uncertainty of life in the Grand Hotel.

  There were not many people in the Grand Hotel because of the season of the year, and perhaps also because it was so very old and shabby. So the Ridgeways had three large, high-ceilinged rooms with a bathroom and a balcony overlooking the garden.

  “And all for a song!” said Mother, meaning that it did not cost very much, but Dumpling wanted to know who was to sing and what the tune was.

  “The tune,” said Father, “is ‘That’s the way the money goes, Pop! Goes the Weasel!’ And we’ll all join in singing it.” So they did, and things started off in the jolliest sort of way.

  The girls slept in the smallest room, and George slept on a cot in the next-sized room, which belonged to Mother and Father. The third room was called the salon, and they used it for everything except sleeping. They played games and read books there. They ate their breakfasts there, unless the weather was fine, as it usually was, and then they had breakfast on the balcony.

  Breakfast was hot chocolate and hard rolls and butter and apricot jam, and a friendly waiter brought it on a tray. It was very good indeed, unless you happened to yearn for cornflakes or eggs or waffles and bacon.

  Sometimes when they ate breakfast on the balcony the bees came out of the jasmine vines on the side of the hotel and sat down on the jam dish to sample the apricot jam. This pleased George very much, and he also found that by scattering a few crumbs along the balcony railing, the sparrows could very easily be coaxed to join them.

  There were no radiators, but each one of the rooms had a fireplace of its own. The fireplaces were closed by little black metal screens, and Father said he thought they were a relic of the past and could not be used now, but naturally the children were dying to try them to find out.

  “Well, we’ll have to ask the manager of the hotel before we do anything,” Mother said, “and, in any case, we won’t consider the matter of trying to light a fire until the cold weather comes.” At least it was something to look forward to, if the lovely weather should suddenly end.

  “We could toast marshmallows,” Susan said, and Dumpling said, “Oh, yum!”

  “We could each have a fireplace to toast each one’s own marshmallows. We wouldn’t have to crowd each other,” George said.

  “But would that be so much fun?” asked Susan. “Isn’t part of the fun being crowded together?”

  “Well, then,” said George, “we could take turns with the different rooms, and think what a lot of marshmallows we could eat that way!”

  “Oh, yum, yum!” said Dumpling.

  So, of course, Susan and George asked, “Isn’t this nice, Dumpling?” hoping to catch her. But Dumpling only looked at them sadly and said, “This is nice, but home is better.”

  The bathroom was very odd, and Mother called it The Afterthought, because at the time the Grand Hotel was built, people had not worried very much about bathrooms. One end of Susan’s and Dumpling’s room was partitioned off with a wall that was partly made of frosted glass. Behind this wall was the bathroom. The tub was so large and high that Dumpling could not get in and out of it by herself. Mother or Father had to hoist her in and out. Being so large, however, it was excellent for sailing all kinds of boats. In one corner of the bathroom was a tremendous clothes hamper, which was perfect for a child to hide in when playing games. The only trouble with it was that, since it was the best hiding place in the rooms, the seeker always looked there first, and it was hard for the one who was found to get out in a hurry to run to base.

  “We’ll find some better use for it yet,” Susan said. “It’s too good to waste on simple hide-and-go-seek. We’ll have to think of something.”

  The hand basin was so impressive—very large, with a broad rim—that Dumpling said it was a pity to waste it on just washing hands. Susan said thoughtlessly, “It’s too bad Irene is made of cloth. If she were only celluloid or china, you could bathe her in it.”

  Dumpling would never admit that Irene was not perfect even though made of rag. But when Susan said this, Dumpling did look very thoughtful. “Maybe it is too bad,” she said. At the same time she clutched Irene to her bosom and called her “My child.”

  Of course Susan did not write all these things in her diary. If she had, the writer’s cramp would have been very bad indeed.

  She even left out the palm trees because she felt that George could not be right about spelling them p-o-m, and she didn’t want her diary to begin with an error. So she finished up her first entry by writing, We think this place is simply suburp.

  The Governess

  It took the Ridgeways a couple of days to unpack and settle down in the Grand Hotel and So Forth and So Forth. These were delightful days of discovery and adventure. Besides the hotel and the garden, there were the waiters and the chambermaid to get acquainted with. The waiter who winked at them when he passed them the soup was called Jean Marie. In spite of a name like that, which at home would certainly have belonged to a girl, he had beetling black brows and a black mustache. The chambermaid was quite young and pretty, and she had Marie in her name too—Anne Marie Fleurette Deschamps.

  Susan wrote in her diary, Daddy says they all have Marie in their names because they are named after the Virgin Mary. It sounds very nice, and I think I will call myself Susan Marie Ridgeway.

  So the first two days passed very pleasantly.

  But on the morning of the third day, while they were eating breakfast on the balcony, Father said, “Well, today we’ll have to start hunting for a governess.”

  “A what?” the children said.

  “A governess,” said Father firmly, “to teach you French so that later, when we get to Paris, you can go to school.”

  “But a governess, Daddy,” said Susan, “that’s only for English children and in books like Jane Eyre and such things.”

  “Besides, we can’t afford it, can we?” asked George hopefully.

  “We can always afford an education for our children,” Father said.

  “Dear me,” said Susan. “But get us a French book and we will study. I already know quite a lot.”

  “L’ascenseur ne marche pas,” said Dumpling, to show that she could speak French quite well already. They all turned around and looked at her, and they saw how the light shone on her glasses, making her look so very learned.

  But Mother said, “It’s no use, kids. You’d never do it out of a book alone, and a gov—let’s call her a teacher—won’t be too terrible. Aft
er all, Daddy and I are working, too.”

  “All right, Mother,” Susan said. “But let’s do call her a governess, if we’ve got to have one. It sounds very interesting and romantical.”

  Already Susan had begun to make up a story in her head about a beautiful young golden-haired governess who was of noble birth, but an orphan, and how the Ridgeways would be able to help her to find her true place in the world.

  She wrote in her diary for that day, We are going to have a beautiful young governess, just like English children.

  Dumpling didn’t say anything more for or against a governess, but George kept saying, “Phooey!”

  As it turned out, only one governess applied for the position, and she arrived for her first interview at an awkward moment. Dumpling had just bathed Irene in the hand basin without asking anyone’s advice beforehand, and she was in the midst of tears, because Irene had suddenly turned into a very lumpy and soggy mess of wet rags. Dumpling kept crying, “My child! My child!” and shedding very noisy tears.

  Father was left in the salon with the governess, both of them sitting uncomfortably on the edges of small gilt chairs, while Mother and Susan and George helped to wring Irene out and hang her by means of clothespins and a string to the balcony railing.

  “Ees one of ze children ill?” the governess inquired anxiously at the sound of Dumpling’s grief.

  “No, no!” said Father nervously, for he was not used to interviewing governesses, and especially not French ones. “It’s just their usual way of carrying on. It’s really the doll who is ill—I mean, of course— Excuse me please, I’ll call my wife.”

  Mother came in, followed by the children. Dumpling was drying her eyes now and wiping her glasses. They all looked at the governess with great curiosity. Susan’s face immediately fell, and she began to rearrange her story to fit a different situation. For if this governess was an orphan, she was certainly neither a young nor a beautiful one.

  In fact, she was probably old, because she had three gray hairs on each side of her head where her black hair was pulled tightly back into a knot. She had a large nose on which she balanced a very nervous pair of eyeglasses. There was a little gold chain attached to the eyeglasses and fastened at the other end to a pin, so that, if the eyeglasses accidentally fell off her nose, they would not crash to pieces on the floor, but hang suspended from her bosom. She was dressed all in black, with a small black hat perched on the top of her head and dangling jet earrings in her ears. She was quite thin, almost as if she had not always had enough to eat.

  As soon as they came in, the governess arose and stood respectfully at attention.

  Father said, “Mademoiselle Beauregard, allow me to present my wife, my daughter Susan, who is thirteen, my son George, who will soon be eleven, and my daughter Dumpling, who is seven.”

  Everybody shook hands with Mademoiselle Beauregard, and she said, “I am extremely enchanted to make your acquaintance, ladies and gentlemen. Is it that you are inhabitants of zat delectable North America?”

  When she found that they were, she said that it was “simply formidable,” and she was again “enchanted,” and also “forcibly interested.”

  It seemed that she had an uncle who had gone to America and settled there many years ago in a place called Ohioway.

  “Perhaps you mean Ohio,” Father said, just as Mother was remarking, “I’m sure you must mean Iowa.”

  But Mademoiselle Beauregard felt sure it was Ohioway. The governess spoke English with a strong French accent, but in spite of that she spoke it very beautifully, using long and formal-sounding words. Susan guessed at once that this would please Father, because he was fond of important-sounding words himself.

  “You see,” the governess explained, “it is because of my uncle zat I have a very great eagerness to learn Engleesh. Zus far I learn what I learn from ze dictionary and ze grammaire. It shall be for me a so formidable privilege to learn ze tongue as she is spoken by ze native. You imagine?”

  “Yes, I imagine,” Mother said, “but, of course, what we really want is for you to teach French to the children, rather than for them to teach English to you.”

  “Naturellement,” said the governess, nodding her head so that her earrings bobbed and her glasses very nearly fell off her nose. She smiled at them all a little tremulously, and her fingers in their black gloves clutched at her purse.

  “What we thought,” said Mother, “was that you might come every day from nine to twelve-thirty and give the children lessons. On some days we thought that you might perhaps have lunch with us and afterward go with the children to the beach or be with them in the hotel garden in the afternoon, speaking French as much as possible. You see, my husband and I are both engaged in writing books.”

  “Ah, ze intellectual life!” said Mademoiselle with a wistful sigh. “She is full of ecstasy, no?”

  Mother almost said, “No,” but then she decided that the answer ought to be “Yes,” so she said, “Oh, yes indeed.” Then she went on to tell the governess how much she and Father could afford to pay. At that point the Ridgeway children stood breathlessly, hoping against hope that it would not be enough and that Mademoiselle Beauregard would go away again and look for richer children to govern.

  But unfortunately Mademoiselle seemed eager to accept whatever the Ridgeways could afford to offer her. “What you wish to give me will be of ze utmost satisfactory,” she said, “and I embark upon ze duties wiz profound and respectable anticipation.”

  So they were saddled with her, and there was no honorable way out of the situation that Susan and George could see. They decided after she left that she was really quite hopeless. Even Susan in her wildest flights of storytelling could make nothing of her. In her diary she couldn’t help writing what George had been saying all along—Phooey!

  Promptly at nine the next morning Mademoiselle Beauregard arrived. Until the last moment the children had hoped that she might be late or not arrive at all. But there she was, right on the dot, with a small French reader under her arm.

  “Bonjour, mes enfants,” she said, and at once they had to learn to say, “Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” in reply.

  She called Susan “Suzanne,” and George “Shorsh”—or at least that is what it sounded like to George. Whenever she wrote out Shorsh, she spelled it “Georges.”

  “But there is only one of me,” George argued, and he tried and tried to tell her how to pronounce it. But Mademoiselle only looked at him firmly and said, “You find yourself now in France, Shorsh.” It was the one thing she was very sure and determined about.

  It was no wonder, of course, that Dumpling’s name should puzzle her.

  “Dompleeng,” she said. “Zat is a name I have never heerd before.”

  “You see,” said Dumpling, taking Mademoiselle by the hand and looking up gently into her face, “Dumpling isn’t my real name. My real name is Irene, but I have given that name to my doll, because I do not need it.”

  “When she was little,” Susan said, “she was quite round, like a dumpling, and we got started calling her that then.”

  Still Mademoiselle did not understand about a dumpling, and they had to describe to her very carefully how a dumpling was something like a roll or a biscuit, only it was boiled in a pot with soup or a stew, and how it came out all soft and round and white. At last Mademoiselle understood.

  Then she took out the small French reader and began to show them the pictures and teach them the words. They saw a cat playing with a ball, and they learned to say, “Le chat joue avec le ballon.”

  “Do you know something funny about cats, Mademoiselle?” George asked. “They can see in the dark.”

  “I am convince zat is true, Shorsh,” said Mademoiselle, “but now is time for ze cat which play avec le ballon.”

  “People say they have nine lives,” continued George, “but it isn’t really that they have nine separate lives. It’s just that they’re smart and agile and know how to land right-side up, so they aren’t easy to kil
l.”

  “Little boys should not attempt to kill ze poor pussycats,” Mademoiselle said gravely.

  “Oh, George wouldn’t kill them, would you, George?” cried Dumpling. “George is very, very fond of animals.”

  “Do you know, Mademoiselle,” said George, “that there are lizards on the wall at the end of this very garden?”

  “So?” said Mademoiselle.

  “If we could go down there to study our lessons, we could have a nature-study lesson.”

  “No, Shorsh,” said Mademoiselle, “it is le chat avec le ballon to learn, but not ze study of nature lesson.”

  So they really did have to work quite hard all morning, but at the same time they were able to teach Mademoiselle quite a few things, too. She did not know, for instance, what cornflakes were, or ice-cream cones. She did not know anything about the rules of football, or what a guinea pig looks like, or how many miles there are between Chicago and Midwest City. In fact, it turned out that she had never even heard of Midwest City, although it was at least half as big as Paris.

  For the first week Mademoiselle was to come only in the morning, until they were all used to getting along together in the French language. So promptly at twelve-thirty on the first day Mademoiselle closed the little French reader and put on her hat.

  “Now I will say to you, Au revoir, mes enfants, which means, ‘Until I see you again, my children,’ and you will reply to me, Au revoir, Mademoiselle.” So they all said, “Au revoir, Mademoiselle,” several times, until they had learned it. But just as Mademoiselle was going out the door George shouted after her, “Oh reservoir! Abyssinia!”

  When George said “Abyssinia” he meant “I’ll be seein’ ya,” and he was very fond of this type of humor. He had said “Abyssinia” to all his friends in Midwest City before he left on his European travels. Sometimes, when he wanted to make it complicated, he said, “If I Russia, the Turkey might fall off the China into the Greece, causing loud Wales. Abyssinia.”