Villette
pestilence! Some pupil had not spoken audibly or distinctly enough to
suit his ear and taste, and now she and others were weeping, and he was
raving from his estrade, almost livid. Curious to mention, as I
appeared, he fell on me.
“Was I the mistress of these girls? Did I profess to teach them the
conduct befitting ladies?—and did I permit and, he doubted not,
encourage them to strangle their mother-tongue in their throats, to
mince and mash it between their teeth, as if they had some base cause
to be ashamed of the words they uttered? Was this modesty? He knew
better. It was a vile pseudo sentiment—the offspring or the forerunner
of evil. Rather than submit to this mopping and mowing, this mincing
and grimacing, this, grinding of a noble tongue, this general
affectation and sickening stubbornness of the pupils of the first
class, he would throw them up for a set of insupportable petites
maîtresses, and confine himself to teaching the ABC to the babies of
the third division.”
What could I say to all this? Really nothing; and I hoped he would
allow me to be silent. The storm recommenced.
“Every answer to his queries was then refused? It seemed to be
considered in _that_ place—that conceited boudoir of a first classe,
with its pretentious book-cases, its green-baized desks, its rubbish of
flower-stands, its trash of framed pictures and maps, and its foreign
surveillante, forsooth!—it seemed to be the fashion to think _there_
that the Professor of Literature was not worthy of a reply! These were
new ideas; imported, he did not doubt, straight from ‘la Grande
Bretagne:’ they savoured of island insolence and arrogance.”
Lull the second—the girls, not one of whom was ever known to weep a
tear for the rebukes of any other master, now all melting like
snow-statues before the intemperate heat of M. Emanuel: I not yet much
shaken, sitting down, and venturing to resume my work.
Something—either in my continued silence or in the movement of my hand,
stitching—transported M. Emanuel beyond the last boundary of patience;
he actually sprang from his estrade. The stove stood near my desk, he
attacked it; the little iron door was nearly dashed from its hinges,
the fuel was made to fly.
“Est-ce que vous avez l’intention de m’insulter?” said he to me, in a
low, furious voice, as he thus outraged, under pretence of arranging
the fire.
It was time to soothe him a little if possible.
“Mais, Monsieur,” said I, “I would not insult you for the world. I
remember too well that you once said we should be friends.”
I did not intend my voice to falter, but it did: more, I think, through
the agitation of late delight than in any spasm of present fear. Still
there certainly was something in M. Paul’s anger—a kind of passion of
emotion—that specially tended to draw tears. I was not unhappy, nor
much afraid, yet I wept.
“Allons, allons!” said he presently, looking round and seeing the
deluge universal. “Decidedly I am a monster and a ruffian. I have only
one pocket-handkerchief,” he added, “but if I had twenty, I would offer
you each one. Your teacher shall be your representative. Here, Miss
Lucy.”
And he took forth and held out to me a clean silk handkerchief. Now a
person who did not know M. Paul, who was unused to him and his
impulses, would naturally have bungled at this offer—declined accepting
the same—et cetera. But I too plainly felt this would never do: the
slightest hesitation would have been fatal to the incipient treaty of
peace. I rose and met the handkerchief half-way, received it with
decorum, wiped therewith my eyes, and, resuming my seat, and retaining
the flag of truce in my hand and on my lap, took especial care during
the remainder of the lesson to touch neither needle nor thimble,
scissors nor muslin. Many a jealous glance did M. Paul cast at these
implements; he hated them mortally, considering sewing a source of
distraction from the attention due to himself. A very eloquent lesson
he gave, and very kind and friendly was he to the close. Ere he had
done, the clouds were dispersed and the sun shining out—tears were
exchanged for smiles.
In quitting the room he paused once more at my desk.
“And your letter?” said he, this time not quite fiercely.
“I have not yet read it, Monsieur.”
“Ah! it is too good to read at once; you save it, as, when I was a boy,
I used to save a peach whose bloom was very ripe?”
The guess came so near the truth, I could not prevent a suddenly-rising
warmth in my face from revealing as much.
“You promise yourself a pleasant moment,” said he, “in reading that
letter; you will open it when alone—n’est-ce pas? Ah! a smile answers.
Well, well! one should not be too harsh; ‘la jeunesse n’a qu’un
temps.’”
“Monsieur, Monsieur!” I cried, or rather whispered after him, as he
turned to go, “do not leave me under a mistake. This is merely a
friend’s letter. Without reading it, I can vouch for that.”
“Je conçois, je conçois: on sait ce que c’est qu’un ami. Bonjour,
Mademoiselle!”
“But, Monsieur, here is your handkerchief.”
“Keep it, keep it, till the letter is read, then bring it me; I shall
read the billet’s tenor in your eyes.”
When he was gone, the pupils having already poured out of the
schoolroom into the berceau, and thence into the garden and court to
take their customary recreation before the five-o’clock dinner, I stood
a moment thinking, and absently twisting the handkerchief round my arm.
For some reason—gladdened, I think, by a sudden return of the golden
glimmer of childhood, roused by an unwonted renewal of its buoyancy,
made merry by the liberty of the closing hour, and, above all, solaced
at heart by the joyous consciousness of that treasure in the case, box,
drawer up-stairs,—I fell to playing with the handkerchief as if it were
a ball, casting it into the air and catching it—as it fell. The game
was stopped by another hand than mine—a hand emerging from a
paletôt-sleeve and stretched over my shoulder; it caught the
extemporised plaything and bore it away with these sullen words:
“Je vois bien que vous vous moquez de moi et de mes effets.”
Really that little man was dreadful: a mere sprite of caprice and,
ubiquity: one never knew either his whim or his whereabout.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE LETTER.
When all was still in the house; when dinner was over and the noisy
recreation-hour past; when darkness had set in, and the quiet lamp of
study was lit in the refectory; when the externes were gone home, the
clashing door and clamorous bell hushed for the evening; when Madame
was safely settled in the salle-à-manger in company with her mother and
some friends; I then glided to the kitchen, begged a bougie for one
half-hour for a particular occasion, found acceptance of my petition at
the hands of my friend Goton, who answered, “Mais certainement,
chou-chou, vous en aurez deux, si vous voulez;” and, light in hand, I
mounted noiseless to the dormitory.
Great was my chagrin to find in that apartment a pupil gone to bed
indisposed,—greater when I recognised, amid the muslin nightcap
borders, the “figure chiffonnée” of Mistress Ginevra Fanshawe; supine
at this moment, it is true—but certain to wake and overwhelm me with
chatter when the interruption would be least acceptable: indeed, as I
watched her, a slight twinkling of the eyelids warned me that the
present appearance of repose might be but a ruse, assumed to cover sly
vigilance over “Timon’s” movements; she was not to be trusted. And I
had so wished to be alone, just to read my precious letter in peace.
Well, I must go to the classes. Having sought and found my prize in its
casket, I descended. Ill-luck pursued me. The classes were undergoing
sweeping and purification by candle-light, according to hebdomadal
custom: benches were piled on desks, the air was dim with dust, damp
coffee-grounds (used by Labassecourien housemaids instead of
tea-leaves) darkened the floor; all was hopeless confusion. Baffled,
but not beaten, I withdrew, bent as resolutely as ever on finding
solitude _somewhere_.
Taking a key whereof I knew the repository, I mounted three staircases
in succession, reached a dark, narrow, silent landing, opened a
worm-eaten door, and dived into the deep, black, cold garret. Here none
would follow me—none interrupt—not Madame herself. I shut the
garret-door; I placed my light on a doddered and mouldy chest of
drawers; I put on a shawl, for the air was ice-cold; I took my letter;
trembling with sweet impatience, I broke its seal.
“Will it be long—will it be short?” thought I, passing my hand across
my eyes to dissipate the silvery dimness of a suave, south-wind shower.
It was long.
“Will it be cool?—will it be kind?”
It was kind.
To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, it seemed very kind:
to my longing and famished thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than it
was.
So little had I hoped, so much had I feared; there was a fulness of
delight in this taste of fruition—such, perhaps, as many a human being
passes through life without ever knowing. The poor English teacher in
the frosty garret, reading by a dim candle guttering in the wintry air,
a letter simply good-natured—nothing more; though that good-nature then
seemed to me godlike—was happier than most queens in palaces.
Of course, happiness of such shallow origin could be but brief; yet,
while it lasted it was genuine and exquisite: a bubble—but a sweet
bubble—of real honey-dew. Dr. John had written to me at length; he had
written to me with pleasure; he had written with benignant mood,
dwelling with sunny satisfaction on scenes that had passed before his
eyes and mine,—on places we had visited together—on conversations we
had held—on all the little subject-matter, in short, of the last few
halcyon weeks. But the cordial core of the delight was, a conviction
the blithe, genial language generously imparted, that it had been
poured out not merely to content _me_—but to gratify _himself_. A
gratification he might never more desire, never more seek—an hypothesis
in every point of view approaching the certain; but _that_ concerned
the future. This present moment had no pain, no blot, no want; full,
pure, perfect, it deeply blessed me. A passing seraph seemed to have
rested beside me, leaned towards my heart, and reposed on its throb a
softening, cooling, healing, hallowing wing. Dr. John, you pained me
afterwards: forgiven be every ill—freely forgiven—for the sake of that
one dear remembered good!
Are there wicked things, not human, which envy human bliss? Are there
evil influences haunting the air, and poisoning it for man? What was
near me?
Something in that vast solitary garret sounded strangely. Most surely
and certainly I heard, as it seemed, a stealthy foot on that floor: a
sort of gliding out from the direction of the black recess haunted by
the malefactor cloaks. I turned: my light was dim; the room was
long—but as I live! I saw in the middle of that ghostly chamber a
figure all black and white; the skirts straight, narrow, black; the
head bandaged, veiled, white.
Say what you will, reader—tell me I was nervous or mad; affirm that I
was unsettled by the excitement of that letter; declare that I dreamed;
this I vow—I saw there—in that room—on that night—an image like—a NUN.
I cried out; I sickened. Had the shape approached me I might have
swooned. It receded: I made for the door. How I descended all the
stairs I know not. By instinct I shunned the refectory, and shaped my
course to Madame’s sitting-room: I burst in. I said—
“There is something in the grenier; I have been there: I saw something.
Go and look at it, all of you!”
I said, “All of you;” for the room seemed to me full of people, though
in truth there were but four present: Madame Beck; her mother, Madame