Villette
time the abuse of England and the English found and left me stolid: I
bore it some fifteen minutes stoically enough; but this hissing
cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said such things at
last—fastening not only upon our women, but upon our greatest names and
best men; sullying, the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the union
jack in mud—that I was stung. With vicious relish he brought up the
most spicy current continental historical falsehoods—than which nothing
can be conceived more offensive. Zélie, and the whole class, became one
grin of vindictive delight; for it is curious to discover how these
clowns of Labassecour secretly hate England. At last, I struck a sharp
stroke on my desk, opened my lips, and let loose this cry:—
“Vive l’Angleterre, l’Histoire et les Héros! A bas la France, la
Fiction et les Faquins!”
The class was struck of a heap. I suppose they thought me mad. The
Professor put up his handkerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its
folds. Little monster of malice! He now thought he had got the victory,
since he had made me angry. In a second he became good-humoured. With
great blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers; talked
poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, perfume, purity,
etcetera; made Frenchified comparisons between the “jeunes filles” and
the sweet blossoms before him; paid Mademoiselle St. Pierre a very
full-blown compliment on the superiority of her bouquet; and ended by
announcing that the first really fine, mild, and balmy morning in
spring, he intended to take the whole class out to breakfast in the
country. “Such of the class, at least,” he added, with emphasis, “as he
could count amongst the number of his friends.”
“Donc je n’y serai pas,” declared I, involuntarily.
“Soit!” was his response; and, gathering his flowers in his arms, he
flashed out of classe; while I, consigning my work, scissors, thimble,
and the neglected little box, to my desk, swept up-stairs. I don’t know
whether _he_ felt hot and angry, but I am free to confess that _I_ did.
Yet with a strange evanescent anger, I had not sat an hour on the edge
of my bed, picturing and repicturing his look, manner, words ere I
smiled at the whole scene. A little pang of regret I underwent that the
box had not been offered. I had meant to gratify him. Fate would not
have it so.
In the course of the afternoon, remembering that desks in classe were
by no means inviolate repositories, and thinking that it was as well to
secure the box, on account of the initials in the lid, P. C. D. E., for
Paul Carl (or Carlos) David Emanuel—such was his full name—these
foreigners must always have a string of baptismals—I descended to the
schoolroom.
It slept in holiday repose. The day pupils were all gone home, the
boarders were out walking, the teachers, except the surveillante of the
week, were in town, visiting or shopping; the suite of divisions was
vacant; so was the grande salle, with its huge solemn globe hanging in
the midst, its pair of many-branched chandeliers, and its horizontal
grand piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. I rather
wondered to find the first classe door ajar; this room being usually
locked when empty, and being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck
and myself, who possessed a duplicate key. I wondered still more, on
approaching, to hear a vague movement as of life—a step, a chair
stirred, a sound like the opening of a desk.
“It is only Madame Beck doing inspection duty,” was the conclusion
following a moment’s reflection. The partially-opened door gave
opportunity for assurance on this point. I looked. Behold! not the
inspecting garb of Madame Beck—the shawl and the clean cap—but the
coat, and the close-shorn, dark head of a man. This person occupied my
chair; his olive hand held my desk open, his nose was lost to view
amongst my papers. His back was towards me, but there could not be a
moment’s question about identity. Already was the attire of ceremony
discarded: the cherished and ink-stained paletôt was resumed; the
perverse bonnet-grec lay on the floor, as if just dropped from the
hand, culpably busy.
Now I knew, and I had long known, that that hand of M. Emanuel’s was on
the most intimate terms with my desk; that it raised and lowered the
lid, ransacked and arranged the contents, almost as familiarly as my
own. The fact was not dubious, nor did he wish it to be so: he left
signs of each visit palpable and unmistakable; hitherto, however, I had
never caught him in the act: watch as I would, I could not detect the
hours and moments of his coming. I saw the brownie’s work in exercises
left overnight full of faults, and found next morning carefully
corrected: I profited by his capricious good-will in loans full welcome
and refreshing. Between a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would
magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a classic, mellow and
sweet in its ripe age. Out of my work-basket would laughingly peep a
romance, under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, whence last
evening’s reading had been extracted. Impossible to doubt the source
whence these treasures flowed: had there been no other indication, one
condemning and traitor peculiarity, common to them all, settled the
question—_they smelt of cigars_. This was very shocking, of course: _I_
thought so at first, and used to open the window with some bustle, to
air my desk, and with fastidious finger and thumb, to hold the peccant
brochures forth to the purifying breeze. I was cured of that formality
suddenly. Monsieur caught me at it one day, understood the inference,
instantly relieved my hand of its burden, and, in another moment, would
have thrust the same into the glowing stove. It chanced to be a book,
on the perusal of which I was bent; so for once I proved as decided and
quicker than himself; recaptured the spoil, and—having saved this
volume—never hazarded a second. With all this, I had never yet been
able to arrest in his visits the freakish, friendly, cigar-loving
phantom.
But now at last I had him: there he was—the very brownie himself; and
there, curling from his lips, was the pale blue breath of his Indian
darling: he was smoking into my desk: it might well betray him.
Provoked at this particular, and yet pleased to surprise him—pleased,
that is, with the mixed feeling of the housewife who discovers at last
her strange elfin ally busy in the dairy at the untimely churn—I softly
stole forward, stood behind him, bent with precaution over his
shoulder.
My heart smote me to see that—after this morning’s hostility, after my
seeming remissness, after the puncture experienced by his feelings, and
the ruffling undergone by his temper—he, all willing to forget and
forgive, had brought me a couple of handsome volumes, of which the
title and authorship were guarantees for interest. Now, as he sat
bending above the desk, he was stirring up its contents; but with
gentle and careful hand; disarranging indeed, but not harming. My heart
smote me: as I bent over him, as he sat unconscious, doing me what good
he could, and I daresay not feeling towards me unkindly, my morning’s
anger quite melted: I did not dislike Professor Emanuel.
I think he heard me breathe. He turned suddenly: his temperament was
nervous, yet he never started, and seldom changed colour: there was
something hardy about him.
“I thought you were gone into town with the other teachers,” said he,
taking a grim gripe of his self-possession, which half-escaped him—“It
is as well you are not. Do you think I care for being caught? Not I. I
often visit your desk.”
“Monsieur, I know it.”
“You find a brochure or tome now and then; but you don’t read them,
because they have passed under this?”—touching his cigar.
“They have, and are no better for the process; but I read them.”
“Without pleasure?”
“Monsieur must not be contradicted.”
“Do you like them, or any of them?—are they acceptable?” “Monsieur has
seen me reading them a hundred times, and knows I have not so many
recreations as to undervalue those he provides.”
“I mean well; and, if you see that I mean well, and derive some little
amusement from my efforts, why can we not be friends?”
“A fatalist would say—because we cannot.”
“This morning,” he continued, “I awoke in a bright mood, and came into
classe happy; you spoiled my day.”
“No, Monsieur, only an hour or two of it, and that unintentionally.”
“Unintentionally! No. It was my fête-day; everybody wished me happiness
but you. The little children of the third division gave each her knot
of violets, lisped each her congratulation:—you—nothing. Not a bud,
leaf, whisper—not a glance. Was this unintentional?”
“I meant no harm.”
“Then you really did not know our custom? You were unprepared? You
would willingly have laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me
pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected? Say so, and all is
forgotten, and the pain soothed.”
“I did know that it was expected: I _was_ prepared; yet I laid out no
centimes on flowers.”
“It is well—you do right to be honest. I should almost have hated you
had you flattered and lied. Better declare at once ‘Paul Carl
Emanuel—je te déteste, mon garçon!’—than smile an interest, look an
affection, and be false and cold at heart. False and cold I don’t think
you are; but you have made a great mistake in life, that I believe; I
think your judgment is warped—that you are indifferent where you ought
to be grateful—and perhaps devoted and infatuated, where you ought to
be cool as your name. Don’t suppose that I wish you to have a passion
for me, Mademoiselle; Dieu vous en garde! What do you start for?
Because I said passion? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and
there is such a thing—though not within these walls, thank heaven! You
are no child that one should not speak of what exists; but I only
uttered the word—the thing, I assure you, is alien to my whole life and
views. It died in the past—in the present it lies buried—its grave is
deep-dug, well-heaped, and many winters old: in the future there will
be a resurrection, as I believe to my souls consolation; but all will
then be changed—form and feeling: the mortal will have put on
immortality—it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. All I say to
_you_, Miss Lucy Snowe, is—that you ought to treat Professor Paul
Emanuel decently.”
I could not, and did not contradict such a sentiment.
“Tell me,” he pursued, “when it is _your_ fête-day, and I will not
grudge a few centimes for a small offering.”
“You will be like me, Monsieur: this cost more than a few centimes, and
I did not grudge its price.”
And taking from the open desk the little box, I put it into his hand.
“It lay ready in my lap this morning,” I continued; “and if Monsieur
had been rather more patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less
interfering—perhaps I should say, too, if _I_ had been calmer and
wiser—I should have given it then.”
He looked at the box: I saw its clear warm tint and bright azure
circlet pleased his eyes. I told him to open it.
“My initials!” said he, indicating the letters in the lid. “Who told
you I was called Carl David?”
“A little bird, Monsieur.”
“Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing
when needful.”
He took out the chain—a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with silk
and sparkling with beads. He liked that too—admired it artlessly, like
a child.
“For me?”
“Yes, for you.”
“This is the thing you were working at last night?”
“The same.”
“You finished it this morning?”
“I did.”
“You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And offered on my fête-day?”
“Yes.”
“This purpose continued as you wove it?”
Again I assented.