Villette
monkish conclave of the drear middle ages had here buried alive for
some sin against her vow. Her shadow it was that tremblers had feared,
through long generations after her poor frame was dust; her black robe
and white veil that, for timid eyes, moonlight and shade had mocked, as
they fluctuated in the night-wind through the garden-thicket.
Independently of romantic rubbish, however, that old garden had its
charms. On summer mornings I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone;
on summer evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the rising
moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than
feel the freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the
gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful
about the roots of the doddered orchard giants. There was a large
berceau, above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a
smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all
along a high and grey wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of
beauty, and hung their clusters in loving profusion about the favoured
spot where jasmine and ivy met and married them.
Doubtless at high noon, in the broad, vulgar middle of the day, when
Madame Beck’s large school turned out rampant, and externes and
pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys’
college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and
limbs—doubtless _then_ the garden was a trite, trodden-down place
enough. But at sunset or the hour of _salut_, when the externes were
gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it
then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear the bells of St. Jean
Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft, exalted sound.
I was walking thus one evening, and had been detained farther within
the verge of twilight than usual, by the still-deepening calm, the
mellow coolness, the fragrant breathing with which flowers no sunshine
could win now answered the persuasion of the dew. I saw by a light in
the oratory window that the Catholic household were then gathered to
evening prayer—a rite, from attendance on which, I now and then, as a
Protestant, exempted myself.
“One moment longer,” whispered solitude and the summer moon, “stay with
us: all is truly quiet now; for another quarter of an hour your
presence will not be missed: the day’s heat and bustle have tired you;
enjoy these precious minutes.”
The windowless backs of houses built in this garden, and in particular
the whole of one side, was skirted by the rear of a long line of
premises—being the boarding-houses of the neighbouring college. This
rear, however, was all blank stone, with the exception of certain attic
loopholes high up, opening from the sleeping-rooms of the
women-servants, and also one casement in a lower story said to mark the
chamber or study of a master. But, though thus secure, an alley, which
ran parallel with the very high wall on that side the garden, was
forbidden to be entered by the pupils. It was called indeed “l’allée
défendue,” and any girl setting foot there would have rendered herself
liable to as severe a penalty as the mild rules of Madame Beck’s
establishment permitted. Teachers might indeed go there with impunity;
but as the walk was narrow, and the neglected shrubs were grown very
thick and close on each side, weaving overhead a roof of branch and
leaf which the sun’s rays penetrated but in rare chequers, this alley
was seldom entered even during day, and after dusk was carefully
shunned.
From the first I was tempted to make an exception to this rule of
avoidance: the seclusion, the very gloom of the walk attracted me. For
a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by
degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such
shades of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature—shades, certainly
not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to
offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my
identity—by slow degrees I became a frequenter of this strait and
narrow path. I made myself gardener of some tintless flowers that grew
between its closely-ranked shrubs; I cleared away the relics of past
autumns, choking up a rustic seat at the far end. Borrowing of Goton,
the cuisinière, a pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, I made this seat
clean. Madame saw me at work and smiled approbation: whether sincerely
or not I don’t know; but she _seemed_ sincere.
“Voyez-vous,” cried she, “comme elle est propre, cette demoiselle
Lucie? Vous aimez donc cette allée, meess?”
“Yes,” I said, “it is quiet and shady.”
“C’est juste,” cried she with an air of bonté; and she kindly
recommended me to confine myself to it as much as I chose, saying, that
as I was not charged with the surveillance, I need not trouble myself
to walk with the pupils: only I might permit her children to come
there, to talk English with me.
On the night in question, I was sitting on the hidden seat reclaimed
from fungi and mould, listening to what seemed the far-off sounds of
the city. Far off, in truth, they were not: this school was in the
city’s centre; hence, it was but five minutes’ walk to the park, scarce
ten to buildings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide streets
brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling
through them to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled
curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the
curtain round each couch, rang for the gay city about us the summons to
festal enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, however: gay
instincts my nature had few; ball or opera I had never seen; and though
often I had heard them described, and even wished to see them, it was
not the wish of one who hopes to partake a pleasure if she could only
reach it—who feels fitted to shine in some bright distant sphere, could
she but thither win her way; it was no yearning to attain, no hunger to
taste; only the calm desire to look on a new thing.
A moon was in the sky, not a full moon, but a young crescent. I saw her
through a space in the boughs overhead. She and the stars, visible
beside her, were no strangers where all else was strange: my childhood
knew them. I had seen that golden sign with the dark globe in its curve
leaning back on azure, beside an old thorn at the top of an old field,
in Old England, in long past days, just as it now leaned back beside a
stately spire in this continental capital.
Oh, my childhood! I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I
spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I _could_ feel.
About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future—such a
future as mine—to be dead. And in catalepsy and a dead trance, I
studiously held the quick of my nature.
At that time, I well remember whatever could excite—certain accidents
of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they
woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I
could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane
shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their
saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was
roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and
creeping outside the casement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with
my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was
wild, it was pitch-dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the
night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too
resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and
full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to
man—too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced
by white and blinding bolts.
I did long, achingly, then and for four and twenty hours afterwards,
for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me
upwards and onwards. This longing, and all of a similar kind, it was
necessary to knock on the head; which I did, figuratively, after the
manner of Jael to Sisera, driving a nail through their temples. Unlike
Sisera, they did not die: they were but transiently stunned, and at
intervals would turn on the nail with a rebellious wrench: then did the
temples bleed, and the brain thrill to its core.
To-night, I was not so mutinous, nor so miserable. My Sisera lay quiet
in the tent, slumbering; and if his pain ached through his slumbers,
something like an angel—the ideal—knelt near, dropping balm on the
soothed temples, holding before the sealed eyes a magic glass, of which
the sweet, solemn visions were repeated in dreams, and shedding a
reflex from her moonlight wings and robe over the transfixed sleeper,
over the tent threshold, over all the landscape lying without. Jael,
the stern woman; sat apart, relenting somewhat over her captive; but
more prone to dwell on the faithful expectation of Heber coming home.
By which words I mean that the cool peace and dewy sweetness of the
night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point,
but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.
Should not such a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been
the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude
Real burst coarsely in—all evil grovelling and repellent as she too
often is.
Amid the intense stillness of that pile of stone overlooking the walk,
the trees, the high wall, I heard a sound; a casement [all the windows
here are casements, opening on hinges] creaked. Ere I had time to look
up and mark where, in which story, or by whom unclosed, a tree overhead
shook, as if struck by a missile; some object dropped prone at my feet.
Nine was striking by St. Jean Baptiste’s clock; day was fading, but it
was not dark: the crescent moon aided little, but the deep gilding of
that point in heaven where the sun beamed last, and the crystalline
clearness of a wide space above, sustained the summer twilight; even in
my dark walk I could, by approaching an opening, have managed to read
print of a small type. Easy was it to see then that the missile was a
box, a small box of white and coloured ivory; its loose lid opened in
my hand; violets lay within, violets smothering a closely folded bit of
pink paper, a note, superscribed, “Pour la robe grise.” I wore indeed a
dress of French grey.
Good. Was this a billet-doux? A thing I had heard of, but hitherto had
not had the honour of seeing or handling. Was it this sort of commodity
I held between my finger and thumb at this moment?
Scarcely: I did not dream it for a moment. Suitor or admirer my very
thoughts had not conceived. All the teachers had dreams of some lover;
one (but she was naturally of a credulous turn) believed in a future
husband. All the pupils above fourteen knew of some prospective
bridegroom; two or three were already affianced by their parents, and
had been so from childhood: but into the realm of feelings and hopes
which such prospects open, my speculations, far less my presumptions,
had never once had warrant to intrude. If the other teachers went into
town, or took a walk on the boulevards, or only attended mass, they
were very certain (according to the accounts brought back) to meet with
some individual of the “opposite sex,” whose rapt, earnest gaze assured
them of their power to strike and to attract. I can’t say that my
experience tallied with theirs, in this respect. I went to church and I
took walks, and am very well convinced that nobody minded me. There was
not a girl or woman in the Rue Fossette who could not, and did not
testify to having received an admiring beam from our young doctor’s
blue eyes at one time or other. I am obliged, however humbling it may