Villette
great white folding-door, with gilt mouldings: I watched to see a leaf
move and open. All had been quiet: not a mouse had stirred; the white
doors were closed and motionless.
“You ayre Engliss?” said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded, so
unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a
motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a
clean, trim nightcap.
I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell
to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it
was—she had entered by a little door behind me, and, being shod with
the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor
approach)—Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when
she said, “You ayre Engliss,” and she now proceeded to work away
volubly in her own tongue. I answered in mine. She partly understood
me, but as I did not at all understand her—though we made together an
awful clamour (anything like Madame’s gift of utterance I had not
hitherto heard or imagined)—we achieved little progress. She rang, ere
long, for aid; which arrived in the shape of a “maîtresse,” who had
been partly educated in an Irish convent, and was esteemed a perfect
adept in the English language. A bluff little personage this maîtresse
was—Labassecourienne from top to toe: and how she did slaughter the
speech of Albion! However, I told her a plain tale, which she
translated. I told her how I had left my own country, intent on
extending my knowledge, and gaining my bread; how I was ready to turn
my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong or degrading;
how I would be a child’s-nurse, or a lady’s-maid, and would not refuse
even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and,
questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won her ear:
“Il n’y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d’entreprises,” said she:
“sont-elles donc intrépides ces femmes là!”
She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me—not pityingly, not
with interest: never a gleam of sympathy, or a shade of compassion,
crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt she was not one to
be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed,
consulting her judgment and studying my narrative. A bell rang.
“Voilà pour la prière du soir!” said she, and rose. Through her
interpreter, she desired me to depart now, and come back on the morrow;
but this did not suit me: I could not bear to return to the perils of
darkness and the street. With energy, yet with a collected and
controlled manner, I said, addressing herself personally, and not the
maîtresse: “Be assured, madame, that by instantly securing my services,
your interests will be served and not injured: you will find me one who
will wish to give, in her labour, a full equivalent for her wages; and
if you hire me, it will be better that I should stay here this night:
having no acquaintance in Villette, and not possessing the language of
the country, how can I secure a lodging?”
“It is true,” said she; “but at least you can give a reference?”
“None.”
She inquired after my luggage: I told her when it would arrive. She
mused. At that moment a man’s step was heard in the vestibule, hastily
proceeding to the outer door. (I shall go on with this part of my tale
as if I had understood all that passed; for though it was then scarce
intelligible to me, I heard it translated afterwards).
“Who goes out now?” demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.
“M. Paul,” replied the teacher. “He came this evening to give a reading
to the first class.”
“The very man I should at this moment most wish to see. Call him.”
The teacher ran to the salon door. M. Paul was summoned. He entered: a
small, dark and spare man, in spectacles.
“Mon cousin,” began Madame, “I want your opinion. We know your skill in
physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance.”
The little man fixed on me his spectacles: A resolute compression of
the lips, and gathering of the brow, seemed to say that he meant to see
through me, and that a veil would be no veil for him.
“I read it,” he pronounced.
“Et qu’en dites vous?”
“Mais—bien des choses,” was the oracular answer.
“Bad or good?”
“Of each kind, without doubt,” pursued the diviner.
“May one trust her word?”
“Are you negotiating a matter of importance?”
“She wishes me to engage her as bonne or gouvernante; tells a tale full
of integrity, but gives no reference.”
“She is a stranger?”
“An Englishwoman, as one may see.”
“She speaks French?”
“Not a word.”
“She understands it?”
“No.”
“One may then speak plainly in her presence?”
“Doubtless.”
He gazed steadily. “Do you need her services?”
“I could do with them. You know I am disgusted with Madame Svini.”
Still he scrutinized. The judgment, when it at last came, was as
indefinite as what had gone before it.
“Engage her. If good predominates in that nature, the action will bring
its own reward; if evil—eh bien! ma cousine, ce sera toujours une bonne
œuvre.” And with a bow and a “bon soir,” this vague arbiter of my
destiny vanished.
And Madame did engage me that very night—by God’s blessing I was spared
the necessity of passing forth again into the lonesome, dreary, hostile
street.
CHAPTER VIII.
MADAME BECK.
Being delivered into the charge of the maîtresse, I was led through a
long narrow passage into a foreign kitchen, very clean but very
strange. It seemed to contain no means of cooking—neither fireplace nor
oven; I did not understand that the great black furnace which filled
one corner, was an efficient substitute for these. Surely pride was not
already beginning its whispers in my heart; yet I felt a sense of
relief when, instead of being left in the kitchen, as I half
anticipated, I was led forward to a small inner room termed a
“cabinet.” A cook in a jacket, a short petticoat and sabots, brought my
supper: to wit—some meat, nature unknown, served in an odd and acid,
but pleasant sauce; some chopped potatoes, made savoury with, I know
not what: vinegar and sugar, I think: a tartine, or slice of bread and
butter, and a baked pear. Being hungry, I ate and was grateful.
After the “prière du soir,” Madame herself came to have another look at
me. She desired me to follow her up-stairs. Through a series of the
queerest little dormitories—which, I heard afterwards, had once been
nuns’ cells: for the premises were in part of ancient date—and through
the oratory—a long, low, gloomy room, where a crucifix hung, pale,
against the wall, and two tapers kept dim vigils—she conducted me to an
apartment where three children were asleep in three tiny beds. A heated
stove made the air of this room oppressive; and, to mend matters, it
was scented with an odour rather strong than delicate: a perfume,
indeed, altogether surprising and unexpected under the circumstances,
being like the combination of smoke with some spirituous essence—a
smell, in short, of whisky.
Beside a table, on which flared the remnant of a candle guttering to
waste in the socket, a coarse woman, heterogeneously clad in a broad
striped showy silk dress, and a stuff apron, sat in a chair fast
asleep. To complete the picture, and leave no doubt as to the state of
matters, a bottle and an empty glass stood at the sleeping beauty’s
elbow.
Madame contemplated this remarkable tableau with great calm; she
neither smiled nor scowled; no impress of anger, disgust, or surprise,
ruffled the equality of her grave aspect; she did not even wake the
woman! Serenely pointing to a fourth bed, she intimated that it was to
be mine; then, having extinguished the candle and substituted for it a
night-lamp, she glided through an inner door, which she left ajar—the
entrance to her own chamber, a large, well-furnished apartment; as was
discernible through the aperture.
My devotions that night were all thanksgiving. Strangely had I been led
since morning—unexpectedly had I been provided for. Scarcely could I
believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since I left London,
under no other guardianship than that which protects the
passenger-bird—with no prospect but the dubious cloud-tracery of hope.
I was a light sleeper; in the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was
hushed, but a white figure stood in the room—Madame in her night-dress.
Moving without perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the
three beds; she approached me: I feigned sleep, and she studied me
long. A small pantomime ensued, curious enough. I daresay she sat a
quarter of an hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She then
drew nearer, bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and turned
back the border so as to expose my hair; she looked at my hand lying on
the bedclothes. This done, she turned to the chair where my clothes
lay: it was at the foot of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I
opened my eyes with precaution, for I own I felt curious to see how far
her taste for research would lead her. It led her a good way: every
article did she inspect. I divined her motive for this proceeding, viz.
the wish to form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer,
her station, means, neatness, &c. The end was not bad, but the means
were hardly fair or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly
turned it inside out: she counted the money in my purse; she opened a
little memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from
between the leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont’s grey hair.
To a bunch of three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box,
she accorded special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a
moment to her own room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her with
my eye: these keys, reader, were not brought back till they had left on
the toilet of the adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. All
being thus done decently and in order, my property was returned to its
place, my clothes were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the
conclusions deduced from this scrutiny? Were they favourable or
otherwise? Vain question. Madame’s face of stone (for of stone in its
present night aspect it looked: it had been human, and, as I said
before, motherly, in the salon) betrayed no response.
Her duty done—I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty—she
rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved towards her own chamber; at the
door, she turned, fixing her eye on the heroine of the bottle, who
still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs.
Svini, Anglicé or Hibernicé, Sweeny)—Mrs. Sweeny’s doom was in Madame
Beck’s eye—an immutable purpose that eye spoke: Madame’s visitations
for shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
un-English: truly I was in a foreign land.
The morrow made me further acquainted with Mrs. Sweeny. It seems she
had introduced herself to her present employer as an English lady in
reduced circumstances: a native, indeed, of Middlesex, professing to
speak the English tongue with the purest metropolitan accent.
Madame—reliant on her own infallible expedients for finding out the
truth in time—had a singular intrepidity in hiring service off-hand (as
indeed seemed abundantly proved in my own case). She received Mrs.
Sweeny as nursery-governess to her three children. I need hardly
explain to the reader that this lady was in effect a native of Ireland;
her station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had
“had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis.” I think
myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or
washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue,