Villette
One February night—I remember it well—there came a voice near Miss
Marchmont’s house, heard by every inmate, but translated, perhaps, only
by one. After a calm winter, storms were ushering in the spring. I had
put Miss Marchmont to bed; I sat at the fireside sewing. The wind was
wailing at the windows; it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened,
it took a new tone—an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the
ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled in every
gust.
“Oh, hush! hush!” I said in my disturbed mind, dropping my work, and
making a vain effort to stop my ears against that subtle, searching
cry. I had heard that very voice ere this, and compulsory observation
had forced on me a theory as to what it boded. Three times in the
course of my life, events had taught me that these strange accents in
the storm—this restless, hopeless cry—denote a coming state of the
atmosphere unpropitious to life. Epidemic diseases, I believed, were
often heralded by a gasping, sobbing, tormented, long-lamenting east
wind. Hence, I inferred, arose the legend of the Banshee. I fancied,
too, I had noticed—but was not philosopher enough to know whether there
was any connection between the circumstances—that we often at the same
time hear of disturbed volcanic action in distant parts of the world;
of rivers suddenly rushing above their banks; and of strange high tides
flowing furiously in on low sea-coasts. “Our globe,” I had said to
myself, “seems at such periods torn and disordered; the feeble amongst
us wither in her distempered breath, rushing hot from steaming
volcanoes.”
I listened and trembled; Miss Marchmont slept.
About midnight, the storm in one half-hour fell to a dead calm. The
fire, which had been burning dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air
change, and become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked out, and
saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a sharp frost.
Turning away, the object that met my eyes was Miss Marchmont awake,
lifting her head from the pillow, and regarding me with unusual
earnestness.
“Is it a fine night?” she asked.
I replied in the affirmative.
“I thought so,” she said; “for I feel so strong, so well. Raise me. I
feel young to-night,” she continued: “young, light-hearted, and happy.
What if my complaint be about to take a turn, and I am yet destined to
enjoy health? It would be a miracle!”
“And these are not the days of miracles,” I thought to myself, and
wondered to hear her talk so. She went on directing her conversation to
the past, and seeming to recall its incidents, scenes, and personages,
with singular vividness.
“I love Memory to-night,” she said: “I prize her as my best friend. She
is just now giving me a deep delight: she is bringing back to my heart,
in warm and beautiful life, realities—not mere empty ideas, but what
were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed, dissolved,
mixed in with grave-mould. I possess just now the hours, the thoughts,
the hopes of my youth. I renew the love of my life—its only love—almost
its only affection; for I am not a particularly good woman: I am not
amiable. Yet I have had my feelings, strong and concentrated; and these
feelings had their object; which, in its single self, was dear to me,
as to the majority of men and women, are all the unnumbered points on
which they dissipate their regard. While I loved, and while I was
loved, what an existence I enjoyed! What a glorious year I can
recall—how bright it comes back to me! What a living spring—what a
warm, glad summer—what soft moonlight, silvering the autumn
evenings—what strength of hope under the ice-bound waters and
frost-hoar fields of that year’s winter! Through that year my heart
lived with Frank’s heart. O my noble Frank—my faithful Frank—my _good_
Frank! so much better than myself—his standard in all things so much
higher! This I can now see and say: if few women have suffered as I did
in his loss, few have enjoyed what I did in his love. It was a far
better kind of love than common; I had no doubts about it or him: it
was such a love as honoured, protected, and elevated, no less than it
gladdened her to whom it was given. Let me now ask, just at this
moment, when my mind is so strangely clear,—let me reflect why it was
taken from me? For what crime was I condemned, after twelve months of
bliss, to undergo thirty years of sorrow?
“I do not know,” she continued after a pause: “I cannot—_cannot_ see
the reason; yet at this hour I can say with sincerity, what I never
tried to say before, Inscrutable God, Thy will be done! And at this
moment I can believe that death will restore me to Frank. I never
believed it till now.”
“He is dead, then?” I inquired in a low voice.
“My dear girl,” she said, “one happy Christmas Eve I dressed and
decorated myself, expecting my lover, very soon to be my husband, would
come that night to visit me. I sat down to wait. Once more I see that
moment—I see the snow twilight stealing through the window over which
the curtain was not dropped, for I designed to watch him ride up the
white walk; I see and feel the soft firelight warming me, playing on my
silk dress, and fitfully showing me my own young figure in a glass. I
see the moon of a calm winter night, float full, clear, and cold, over
the inky mass of shrubbery, and the silvered turf of my grounds. I
wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast. The
flames had died in the fire, but it was a bright mass yet; the moon was
mounting high, but she was still visible from the lattice; the clock
neared ten; he rarely tarried later than this, but once or twice he had
been delayed so long.
“Would he for once fail me? No—not even for once; and now he was
coming—and coming fast—to atone for lost time. ‘Frank! you furious
rider,’ I said inwardly, listening gladly, yet anxiously, to his
approaching gallop, ‘you shall be rebuked for this: I will tell you it
is _my_ neck you are putting in peril; for whatever is yours is, in a
dearer and tenderer sense, mine.’ There he was: I saw him; but I think
tears were in my eyes, my sight was so confused. I saw the horse; I
heard it stamp—I saw at least a mass; I heard a clamour. _Was_ it a
horse? or what heavy, dragging thing was it, crossing, strangely dark,
the lawn. How could I name that thing in the moonlight before me? or
how could I utter the feeling which rose in my soul?
“I could only run out. A great animal—truly, Frank’s black horse—stood
trembling, panting, snorting before the door; a man held it, Frank, as
I thought.
“‘What is the matter?’ I demanded. Thomas, my own servant, answered by
saying sharply, ‘Go into the house, madam.’ And then calling to another
servant, who came hurrying from the kitchen as if summoned by some
instinct, ‘Ruth, take missis into the house directly.’ But I was
kneeling down in the snow, beside something that lay there—something
that I had seen dragged along the ground—something that sighed, that
groaned on my breast, as I lifted and drew it to me. He was not dead;
he was not quite unconscious. I had him carried in; I refused to be
ordered about and thrust from him. I was quite collected enough, not
only to be my own mistress but the mistress of others. They had begun
by trying to treat me like a child, as they always do with people
struck by God’s hand; but I gave place to none except the surgeon; and
when he had done what he could, I took my dying Frank to myself. He had
strength to fold me in his arms; he had power to speak my name; he
heard me as I prayed over him very softly; he felt me as I tenderly and
fondly comforted him.
“‘Maria,’ he said, ‘I am dying in Paradise.’ He spent his last breath
in faithful words for me. When the dawn of Christmas morning broke, my
Frank was with God.
“And that,” she went on, “happened thirty years ago. I have suffered
since. I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft,
amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil
spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a
woe-struck and selfish woman.”
“You have done much good,” I said; for she was noted for her liberal
almsgiving.
“I have not withheld money, you mean, where it could assuage
affliction. What of that? It cost me no effort or pang to give. But I
think from this day I am about to enter a better frame of mind, to
prepare myself for reunion with Frank. You see I still think of Frank
more than of God; and unless it be counted that in thus loving the
creature so much, so long, and so exclusively, I have not at least
blasphemed the Creator, small is my chance of salvation. What do you
think, Lucy, of these things? Be my chaplain, and tell me.”
This question I could not answer: I had no words. It seemed as if she
thought I _had_ answered it.
“Very right, my child. We should acknowledge God merciful, but not
always for us comprehensible. We should accept our own lot, whatever it
be, and try to render happy that of others. Should we not? Well,
to-morrow I will begin by trying to make you happy. I will endeavour to
do something for you, Lucy: something that will benefit you when I am
dead. My head aches now with talking too much; still I am happy. Go to
bed. The clock strikes two. How late you sit up; or rather how late I,
in my selfishness, keep you up. But go now; have no more anxiety for
me; I feel I shall rest well.”
She composed herself as if to slumber. I, too, retired to my crib in a
closet within her room. The night passed in quietness; quietly her doom
must at last have come: peacefully and painlessly: in the morning she
was found without life, nearly cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her
previous excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the prelude
of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the thread of an existence so
long fretted by affliction.
CHAPTER V.
TURNING A NEW LEAF.
My mistress being dead, and I once more alone, I had to look out for a
new place. About this time I might be a little—a very little—shaken in
nerves. I grant I was not looking well, but, on the contrary, thin,
haggard, and hollow-eyed; like a sitter-up at night, like an
overwrought servant, or a placeless person in debt. In debt, however, I
was not; nor quite poor; for though Miss Marchmont had not had time to
benefit me, as, on that last night, she said she intended, yet, after
the funeral, my wages were duly paid by her second cousin, the heir, an
avaricious-looking man, with pinched nose and narrow temples, who,
indeed, I heard long afterwards, turned out a thorough miser: a direct
contrast to his generous kinswoman, and a foil to her memory, blessed
to this day by the poor and needy. The possessor, then, of fifteen
pounds; of health, though worn, not broken, and of a spirit in similar
condition; I might still; in comparison with many people, be regarded
as occupying an enviable position. An embarrassing one it was, however,
at the same time; as I felt with some acuteness on a certain day, of
which the corresponding one in the next week was to see my departure
from my present abode, while with another I was not provided.
In this dilemma I went, as a last and sole resource, to see and consult
an old servant of our family; once my nurse, now housekeeper at a grand
mansion not far from Miss Marchmont’s. I spent some hours with her; she
comforted, but knew not how to advise me. Still all inward darkness, I
left her about twilight; a walk of two miles lay before me; it was a
clear, frosty night. In spite of my solitude, my poverty, and my
perplexity, my heart, nourished and nerved with the vigour of a youth
that had not yet counted twenty-three summers, beat light and not
feebly. Not feebly, I am sure, or I should have trembled in that lonely