Villette
glaring, and dusty. This state of things had been foreseen and provided
for. Just beyond the boundary of the farm we met two spacious vehicles
coming to fetch us—such conveyances as are hired out purposely for the
accommodation of school-parties; here, with good management, room was
found for all, and in another hour M. Paul made safe consignment of his
charge at the Rue Fossette. It had been a pleasant day: it would have
been perfect, but for the breathing of melancholy which had dimmed its
sunshine a moment.
That tarnish was renewed the same evening.
Just about sunset, I saw M. Emanuel come out of the front-door,
accompanied by Madame Beck. They paced the centre-alley for nearly an
hour, talking earnestly: he—looking grave, yet restless; she—wearing an
amazed, expostulatory, dissuasive air.
I wondered what was under discussion; and when Madame Beck re-entered
the house as it darkened, leaving her kinsman Paul yet lingering in the
garden, I said to myself—“He called me ‘petite sœur’ this morning. If
he were really my brother, how I should like to go to him just now, and
ask what it is that presses on his mind. See how he leans against that
tree, with his arms crossed and his brow bent. He wants consolation, I
know: Madame does not console: she only remonstrates. What now——?”
Starting from quiescence to action, M. Paul came striding erect and
quick down the garden. The carré doors were yet open: I thought he was
probably going to water the orange-trees in the tubs, after his
occasional custom; on reaching the court, however, he took an abrupt
turn and made for the berceau and the first-classe glass door. There,
in that first classe I was, thence I had been watching him; but there I
could not find courage to await his approach. He had turned so
suddenly, he strode so fast, he looked so strange; the coward within me
grew pale, shrank and—not waiting to listen to reason, and hearing the
shrubs crush and the gravel crunch to his advance—she was gone on the
wings of panic.
Nor did I pause till I had taken sanctuary in the oratory, now empty.
Listening there with beating pulses, and an unaccountable, undefined
apprehension, I heard him pass through all the schoolrooms, clashing
the doors impatiently as he went; I heard him invade the refectory
which the “lecture pieuse” was now holding under hallowed constraint; I
heard him pronounce these words—“Où est Mademoiselle Lucie?”
And just as, summoning my courage, I was preparing to go down and do
what, after all, I most wished to do in the world—viz., meet him—the
wiry voice of St. Pierre replied glibly and falsely, “Elle est au lit.”
And he passed, with the stamp of vexation, into the corridor. There
Madame Beck met, captured, chid, convoyed to the street-door, and
finally dismissed him.
As that street-door closed, a sudden amazement at my own perverse
proceeding struck like a blow upon me. I felt from the first it was me
he wanted—me he was seeking—and had not I wanted him too? What, then,
had carried me away? What had rapt me beyond his reach? He had
something to tell: he was going to tell me that something: my ear
strained its nerve to hear it, and I had made the confidence
impossible. Yearning to listen and console, while I thought audience
and solace beyond hope’s reach—no sooner did opportunity suddenly and
fully arrive, than I evaded it as I would have evaded the levelled
shaft of mortality.
Well, my insane inconsistency had its reward. Instead of the comfort,
the certain satisfaction, I might have won—could I but have put choking
panic down, and stood firm two minutes—here was dead blank, dark doubt,
and drear suspense.
I took my wages to my pillow, and passed the night counting them.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MALEVOLA.
Madame Beck called me on Thursday afternoon, and asked whether I had
any occupation to hinder me from going into town and executing some
little commissions for her at the shops.
Being disengaged, and placing myself at her service, I was presently
furnished with a list of the wools, silks, embroidering thread,
etcetera, wanted in the pupils’ work, and having equipped myself in a
manner suiting the threatening aspect of a cloudy and sultry day, I was
just drawing the spring-bolt of the street-door, in act to issue forth,
when Madame’s voice again summoned me to the salle-à-manger.
“Pardon, Meess Lucie!” cried she, in the seeming haste of an impromptu
thought, “I have just recollected one more errand for you, if your
good-nature will not deem itself over-burdened?”
Of course I “confounded myself” in asseverations to the contrary; and
Madame, running into the little salon, brought thence a pretty basket,
filled with fine hothouse fruit, rosy, perfect, and tempting, reposing
amongst the dark green, wax-like leaves, and pale yellow stars of, I
know not what, exotic plant.
“There,” she said, “it is not heavy, and will not shame your neat
toilette, as if it were a household, servant-like detail. Do me the
favour to leave this little basket at the house of Madame Walravens,
with my felicitations on her fête. She lives down in the old town,
Numéro 3, Rue des Mages. I fear you will find the walk rather long, but
you have the whole afternoon before you, and do not hurry; if you are
not back in time for dinner, I will order a portion to be saved, or
Goton, with whom you are a favourite, will have pleasure in tossing up
some trifle, for your especial benefit. You shall not be forgotten, ma
bonne Meess. And oh! please!” (calling me back once more) “be sure to
insist on seeing Madame Walravens herself, and giving the basket into
her own hands, in order that there may be no mistake, for she is rather
a punctilious personage. Adieu! Au revoir!”
And at last I got away. The shop commissions took some time to execute,
that choosing and matching of silks and wools being always a tedious
business, but at last I got through my list. The patterns for the
slippers, the bell-ropes, the cabas were selected—the slides and
tassels for the purses chosen—the whole “tripotage,” in short, was off
my mind; nothing but the fruit and the felicitations remained to be
attended to.
I rather liked the prospect of a long walk, deep into the old and grim
Basse-Ville; and I liked it no worse because the evening sky, over the
city, was settling into a mass of black-blue metal, heated at the rim,
and inflaming slowly to a heavy red.
I fear a high wind, because storm demands that exertion of strength and
use of action I always yield with pain; but the sullen down-fall, the
thick snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, ask only resignation—the
quiet abandonment of garments and person to be drenched. In return, it
sweeps a great capital clean before you; it makes you a quiet path
through broad, grand streets; it petrifies a living city as if by
eastern enchantment; it transforms a Villette into a Tadmor. Let, then,
the rains fall, and the floods descend—only I must first get rid of
this basket of fruit.
An unknown clock from an unknown tower (Jean Baptiste’s voice was now
too distant to be audible) was tolling the third quarter past five,
when I reached that street and house whereof Madame Beck had given me
the address. It was no street at all; it seemed rather to be part of a
square: it was quiet, grass grew between the broad grey flags, the
houses were large and looked very old—behind them rose the appearance
of trees, indicating gardens at the back. Antiquity brooded above this
region, business was banished thence. Rich men had once possessed this
quarter, and once grandeur had made her seat here. That church, whose
dark, half-ruinous turrets overlooked the square, was the venerable and
formerly opulent shrine of the Magi. But wealth and greatness had long
since stretched their gilded pinions and fled hence, leaving these
their ancient nests, perhaps to house Penury for a time, or perhaps to
stand cold and empty, mouldering untenanted in the course of winters.
As I crossed this deserted “place,” on whose pavement drops almost as
large as a five-franc piece were now slowly darkening, I saw, in its
whole expanse, no symptom or evidence of life, except what was given in
the figure of an infirm old priest, who went past, bending and propped
on a staff—the type of eld and decay.
He had issued from the very house to which I was directed; and when I
paused before the door just closed after him, and rang the bell, he
turned to look at me. Nor did he soon avert his gaze; perhaps he
thought me, with my basket of summer fruit, and my lack of the dignity
age confers, an incongruous figure in such a scene. I know, had a young
ruddy-faced bonne opened the door to admit me, I should have thought
such a one little in harmony with her dwelling; but, when I found
myself confronted by a very old woman, wearing a very antique peasant
costume, a cap alike hideous and costly, with long flaps of native
lace, a petticoat and jacket of cloth, and sabots more like little
boats than shoes, it seemed all right, and soothingly in character.
The expression of her face was not quite so soothing as the cut of her
costume; anything more cantankerous I have seldom seen; she would
scarcely reply to my inquiry after Madame Walravens; I believe she
would have snatched the basket of fruit from my hand, had not the old
priest, hobbling up, checked her, and himself lent an ear to the
message with which I was charged.
His apparent deafness rendered it a little difficult to make him fully
understand that I must see Madame Walravens, and consign the fruit into
her own hands. At last, however, he comprehended the fact that such
were my orders, and that duty enjoined their literal fulfilment.
Addressing the aged bonne, not in French, but in the aboriginal tongue
of Labassecour, he persuaded her, at last, to let me cross the
inhospitable threshold, and himself escorting me up-stairs, I was
ushered into a sort of salon, and there left.
The room was large, and had a fine old ceiling, and almost church-like
windows of coloured-glass; but it was desolate, and in the shadow of a
coming storm, looked strangely lowering. Within—opened a smaller room;
there, however, the blind of the single casement was closed; through
the deep gloom few details of furniture were apparent. These few I
amused myself by puzzling to make out; and, in particular, I was
attracted by the outline of a picture on the wall.
By-and-by the picture seemed to give way: to my bewilderment, it shook,
it sunk, it rolled back into nothing; its vanishing left an opening
arched, leading into an arched passage, with a mystic winding stair;
both passage and stair were of cold stone, uncarpeted and unpainted.
Down this donjon stair descended a tap, tap, like a stick; soon there
fell on the steps a shadow, and last of all, I was aware of a
substance.
Yet, was it actual substance, this appearance approaching me? this
obstruction, partially darkening the arch?
It drew near, and I saw it well. I began to comprehend where I was.
Well might this old square be named quarter of the Magi—well might the
three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three mystic sages of
a dead and dark art. Hoar enchantment here prevailed; a spell had
opened for me elf-land—that cell-like room, that vanishing picture,
that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all parts of a fairy
tale. Distincter even than these scenic details stood the chief
figure—Cunegonde, the sorceress! Malevola, the evil fairy. How was she?
She might be three feet high, but she had no shape; her skinny hands
rested upon each other, and pressed the gold knob of a wand-like ivory
staff. Her face was large, set, not upon her shoulders, but before her
breast; she seemed to have no neck; I should have said there were a