Villette
I felt seriously disposed to resent his brusqueries, or freeze before
his fierceness; what he had said to-night, however, I considered
unwarranted: my extreme disapprobation of the proceeding must be
marked, however slightly. I merely said:—“I am provided with
attendance.”
Which was true, as Ginevra and I were to be sent home in the carriage;
and I passed him with the sliding obeisance with which he was wont to
be saluted in classe by pupils crossing his estrade.
Having sought my shawl, I returned to the vestibule. M. Emanuel stood
there as if waiting. He observed that the night was fine.
“Is it?” I said, with a tone and manner whose consummate chariness and
frostiness I could not but applaud. It was so seldom I could properly
act out my own resolution to be reserved and cool where I had been
grieved or hurt, that I felt almost proud of this one successful
effort. That “Is it?” sounded just like the manner of other people. I
had heard hundreds of such little minced, docked, dry phrases, from the
pursed-up coral lips of a score of self-possessed, self-sufficing
misses and mesdemoiselles. That M. Paul would not stand any prolonged
experience of this sort of dialogue I knew; but he certainly merited a
sample of the curt and arid. I believe he thought so himself, for he
took the dose quietly. He looked at my shawl and objected to its
lightness. I decidedly told him it was as heavy as I wished. Receding
aloof, and standing apart, I leaned on the banister of the stairs,
folded my shawl about me, and fixed my eyes on a dreary religious
painting darkening the wall.
Ginevra was long in coming: tedious seemed her loitering. M. Paul was
still there; my ear expected from his lips an angry tone. He came
nearer. “Now for another hiss!” thought I: had not the action been too
uncivil I could have stopped my ears with my fingers in terror of the
thrill. Nothing happens as we expect: listen for a coo or a murmur; it
is then you will hear a cry of prey or pain. Await a piercing shriek,
an angry threat, and welcome an amicable greeting, a low kind whisper.
M. Paul spoke gently:—“Friends,” said he, “do not quarrel for a word.
Tell me, was it I or ce grand fat d’Anglais” (so he profanely
denominated Dr. Bretton), “who made your eyes so humid, and your cheeks
so hot as they are even now?”
“I am not conscious of you, monsieur, or of any other having excited
such emotion as you indicate,” was my answer; and in giving it, I again
surpassed my usual self, and achieved a neat, frosty falsehood.
“But what did I say?” he pursued; “tell me: I was angry: I have
forgotten my words; what were they?”
“Such as it is best to forget!” said I, still quite calm and chill.
“Then it was _my_ words which wounded you? Consider them unsaid: permit
my retractation; accord my pardon.”
“I am not angry, Monsieur.”
“Then you are worse than angry—grieved. Forgive me, Miss Lucy.”
“M. Emanuel, I _do_ forgive you.”
“Let me hear you say, in the voice natural to you, and not in that
alien tone, ‘Mon ami, je vous pardonne.’”
He made me smile. Who could help smiling at his wistfulness, his
simplicity, his earnestness?
“Bon!” he cried. “Voilà que le jour va poindre! Dites donc, mon ami.”
“Monsieur Paul, je vous pardonne.”
“I will have no monsieur: speak the other word, or I shall not believe
you sincere: another effort—_mon ami_, or else in English,—my friend!”
Now, “my friend” had rather another sound and significancy than “_mon
ami_;” it did not breathe the same sense of domestic and intimate
affection; “_mon ami_” I could _not_ say to M. Paul; “my friend,” I
could, and did say without difficulty. This distinction existed not for
him, however, and he was quite satisfied with the English phrase. He
smiled. You should have seen him smile, reader; and you should have
marked the difference between his countenance now, and that he wore
half an hour ago. I cannot affirm that I had ever witnessed the smile
of pleasure, or content, or kindness round M. Paul’s lips, or in his
eyes before. The ironic, the sarcastic, the disdainful, the
passionately exultant, I had hundreds of times seen him express by what
he called a smile, but any illuminated sign of milder or warmer
feelings struck me as wholly new in his visage. It changed it as from a
mask to a face: the deep lines left his features; the very complexion
seemed clearer and fresher; that swart, sallow, southern darkness which
spoke his Spanish blood, became displaced by a lighter hue. I know not
that I have ever seen in any other human face an equal metamorphosis
from a similar cause. He now took me to the carriage: at the same
moment M. de Bassompierre came out with his niece.
In a pretty humour was Mistress Fanshawe; she had found the evening a
grand failure: completely upset as to temper, she gave way to the most
uncontrolled moroseness as soon as we were seated, and the
carriage-door closed. Her invectives against Dr. Bretton had something
venomous in them. Having found herself impotent either to charm or
sting him, hatred was her only resource; and this hatred she expressed
in terms so unmeasured and proportion so monstrous, that, after
listening for a while with assumed stoicism, my outraged sense of
justice at last and suddenly caught fire. An explosion ensued: for I
could be passionate, too; especially with my present fair but faulty
associate, who never failed to stir the worst dregs of me. It was well
that the carriage-wheels made a tremendous rattle over the flinty
Choseville pavement, for I can assure the reader there was neither dead
silence nor calm discussion within the vehicle. Half in earnest, half
in seeming, I made it my business to storm down Ginevra. She had set
out rampant from the Rue Crécy; it was necessary to tame her before we
reached the Rue Fossette: to this end it was indispensable to show up
her sterling value and high deserts; and this must be done in language
of which the fidelity and homeliness might challenge comparison with
the compliments of a John Knox to a Mary Stuart. This was the right
discipline for Ginevra; it suited her. I am quite sure she went to bed
that night all the better and more settled in mind and mood, and slept
all the more sweetly for having undergone a sound moral drubbing.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE WATCHGUARD.
M. Paul Emanuel owned an acute sensitiveness to the annoyance of
interruption, from whatsoever cause occurring, during his lessons: to
pass through the classe under such circumstances was considered by the
teachers and pupils of the school, individually and collectively, to be
as much as a woman’s or girl’s life was worth.
Madame Beck herself, if forced to the enterprise, would “skurry”
through, retrenching her skirts, and carefully coasting the formidable
estrade, like a ship dreading breakers. As to Rosine, the portress—on
whom, every half-hour, devolved the fearful duty of fetching pupils out
of the very heart of one or other of the divisions to take their
music-lessons in the oratory, the great or little saloon, the
salle-à-manger, or some other piano-station—she would, upon her second
or third attempt, frequently become almost tongue-tied from excess of
consternation—a sentiment inspired by the unspeakable looks levelled at
her through a pair of dart-dealing spectacles.
One morning I was sitting in the carré, at work upon a piece of
embroidery which one of the pupils had commenced but delayed to finish,
and while my fingers wrought at the frame, my ears regaled themselves
with listening to the crescendos and cadences of a voice haranguing in
the neighbouring classe, in tones that waxed momentarily more unquiet,
more ominously varied. There was a good strong partition-wall between
me and the gathering storm, as well as a facile means of flight through
the glass-door to the court, in case it swept this way; so I am afraid
I derived more amusement than alarm from these thickening symptoms.
Poor Rosine was not safe: four times that blessed morning had she made
the passage of peril; and now, for the fifth time, it became her
dangerous duty to snatch, as it were, a brand from the burning—a pupil
from under M. Paul’s nose.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” cried she. “Que vais-je devenir? Monsieur va me
tuer, je suis sûre; car il est d’une colère!”
Nerved by the courage of desperation, she opened the door.
“Mademoiselle La Malle au piano!” was her cry.
Ere she could make good her retreat, or quite close the door, this
voice uttered itself:—
“Dès ce moment!—la classe est défendue. La première qui ouvrira cette
porte, ou passera par cette division, sera pendue—fut-ce Madame Beck
elle-même!”
Ten minutes had not succeeded the promulgation of this decree when
Rosine’s French pantoufles were again heard shuffling along the
corridor.
“Mademoiselle,” said she, “I would not for a five-franc piece go into
that classe again just now: Monsieur’s lunettes are really terrible;
and here is a commissionaire come with a message from the Athénée. I
have told Madame Beck I dare not deliver it, and she says I am to
charge you with it.”
“Me? No, that is rather too bad! It is not in my line of duty. Come,
come, Rosine! bear your own burden. Be brave—charge once more!”
“I, Mademoiselle?—impossible! Five times I have crossed him this day.
Madame must really hire a gendarme for this service. Ouf! Je n’en puis
plus!”
“Bah! you are only a coward. What is the message?”
“Precisely of the kind with which Monsieur least likes to be pestered:
an urgent summons to go directly to the Athénée, as there is an
official visitor—inspector—I know not what—arrived, and Monsieur _must_
meet him: you know how he hates a _must_.”
Yes, I knew well enough. The restive little man detested spur or curb:
against whatever was urgent or obligatory, he was sure to revolt.
However, I accepted the responsibility—not, certainly, without fear,
but fear blent with other sentiments, curiosity, amongst them. I opened
the door, I entered, I closed it behind me as quickly and quietly as a
rather unsteady hand would permit; for to be slow or bustling, to
rattle a latch, or leave a door gaping wide, were aggravations of crime
often more disastrous in result than the main crime itself. There I
stood then, and there he sat; his humour was visibly bad—almost at its
worst; he had been giving a lesson in arithmetic—for he gave lessons on
any and every subject that struck his fancy—and arithmetic being a dry
subject, invariably disagreed with him: not a pupil but trembled when
he spoke of figures. He sat, bent above his desk: to look up at the
sound of an entrance, at the occurrence of a direct breach of his will
and law, was an effort he could not for the moment bring himself to
make. It was quite as well: I thus gained time to walk up the long
classe; and it suited my idiosyncracy far better to encounter the near
burst of anger like his, than to bear its menace at a distance.
At his estrade I paused, just in front; of course I was not worthy of
immediate attention: he proceeded with his lesson. Disdain would not
do: he must hear and he must answer my message.
Not being quite tall enough to lift my head over his desk, elevated
upon the estrade, and thus suffering eclipse in my present position, I
ventured to peep round, with the design, at first, of merely getting a
better view of his face, which had struck me when I entered as bearing
a close and picturesque resemblance to that of a black and sallow
tiger. Twice did I enjoy this side-view with impunity, advancing and
receding unseen; the third time my eye had scarce dawned beyond the
obscuration of the desk, when it was caught and transfixed through its
very pupil—transfixed by the “lunettes.” Rosine was right; these
utensils had in them a blank and immutable terror, beyond the mobile