Villette
On the customary evening, hearing the customary hour strike, I
collected my books and papers, my pen and ink, and sought the large
division.
In classe there was no one, and it lay all in cool deep shadow; but
through the open double doors was seen the carré, filled with pupils
and with light; over hall and figures blushed the westering sun. It
blushed so ruddily and vividly, that the hues of the walls and the
variegated tints of the dresses seemed all fused in one warm glow. The
girls were seated, working or studying; in the midst of their circle
stood M. Emanuel, speaking good-humouredly to a teacher. His dark
paletôt, his jetty hair, were tinged with many a reflex of crimson; his
Spanish face, when he turned it momentarily, answered the sun’s
animated kiss with an animated smile. I took my place at a desk.
The orange-trees, and several plants, full and bright with bloom,
basked also in the sun’s laughing bounty; they had partaken it the
whole day, and now asked water. M. Emanuel had a taste for gardening;
he liked to tend and foster plants. I used to think that working
amongst shrubs with a spade or a watering-pot soothed his nerves; it
was a recreation to which he often had recourse; and now he looked to
the orange-trees, the geraniums, the gorgeous cactuses, and revived
them all with the refreshment their drought needed. His lips meantime
sustained his precious cigar, that (for him) first necessary and prime
luxury of life; its blue wreaths curled prettily enough amongst the
flowers, and in the evening light. He spoke no more to the pupils, nor
to the mistresses, but gave many an endearing word to a small
spanieless (if one may coin a word), that nominally belonged to the
house, but virtually owned him as master, being fonder of him than any
inmate. A delicate, silky, loving, and lovable little doggie she was,
trotting at his side, looking with expressive, attached eyes into his
face; and whenever he dropped his bonnet-grec or his handkerchief,
which he occasionally did in play, crouching beside it with the air of
a miniature lion guarding a kingdom’s flag.
There were many plants, and as the amateur gardener fetched all the
water from the well in the court, with his own active hands, his work
spun on to some length. The great school-clock ticked on. Another hour
struck. The carré and the youthful group lost the illusion of sunset.
Day was drooping. My lesson, I perceived, must to-night be very short;
but the orange-trees, the cacti, the camelias were all served now. Was
it my turn?
Alas! in the garden were more plants to be looked after,—favourite
rose-bushes, certain choice flowers; little Sylvie’s glad bark and
whine followed the receding paletôt down the alleys. I put up some of
my books; I should not want them all; I sat and thought; and waited,
involuntarily deprecating the creeping invasion of twilight.
Sylvie, gaily frisking, emerged into view once more, heralding the
returning paletôt; the watering-pot was deposited beside the well; it
had fulfilled its office; how glad I was! Monsieur washed his hands in
a little stone bowl. There was no longer time for a lesson now; ere
long the prayer-bell must ring; but still we should meet; he would
speak; a chance would be offered of reading in his eyes the riddle of
his shyness. His ablutions over, he stood, slowly re-arranging his
cuffs, looking at the horn of a young moon, set pale in the opal sky,
and glimmering faint on the oriel of Jean Baptiste. Sylvie watched the
mood contemplative; its stillness irked her; she whined and jumped to
break it. He looked down.
“Petite exigeante,” said he; “you must not be forgotten one moment, it
seems.”
He stopped, lifted her in his arms, sauntered across the court, within
a yard of the line of windows near one of which I sat: he sauntered
lingeringly, fondling the spaniel in his bosom, calling her tender
names in a tender voice. On the front-door steps he turned; once again
he looked at the moon, at the grey cathedral, over the remoter spires
and house-roofs fading into a blue sea of night-mist; he tasted the
sweet breath of dusk, and noted the folded bloom of the garden; he
suddenly looked round; a keen beam out of his eye rased the white
façade of the classes, swept the long line of croisées. I think he
bowed; if he did, I had no time to return the courtesy. In a moment he
was gone; the moonlit threshold lay pale and shadowless before the
closed front door.
Gathering in my arms all that was spread on the desk before me, I
carried back the unused heap to its place in the third classe. The
prayer-bell rang; I obeyed its summons.
The morrow would not restore him to the Rue Fossette, that day being
devoted entirely to his college. I got through my teaching; I got over
the intermediate hours; I saw evening approaching, and armed myself for
its heavy ennuis. Whether it was worse to stay with my co-inmates, or
to sit alone, I had not considered; I naturally took up the latter
alternative; if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart
or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the
lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some
book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black
fluid in that ink-glass. With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with
a weary hand I turned up its contents.
One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes sewn in familiar covers,
were taken out and put back hopeless: they had no charm; they could not
comfort. Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I had not seen
it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day—this very afternoon;
the tract must have been introduced within the last hour, while we were
at dinner.
I opened it. What was it? What would it say to me?
It was neither tale nor poem, neither essay nor history; it neither
sung, nor related, not discussed. It was a theological work; it
preached and it persuaded.
I lent to it my ear very willingly, for, small as it was, it possessed
its own spell, and bound my attention at once. It preached Romanism; it
persuaded to conversion. The voice of that sly little book was a
honeyed voice; its accents were all unction and balm. Here roared no
utterance of Rome’s thunders, no blasting of the breath of her
displeasure. The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in fear of
the heretic’s hell, as on account of the comfort, the indulgence, the
tenderness Holy Church offered: far be it from her to threaten or to
coerce; her wish was to guide and win. _She_ persecute? Oh dear no! not
on any account!
This meek volume was not addressed to the hardened and worldly; it was
not even strong meat for the strong: it was milk for babes: the mild
effluence of a mother’s love towards her tenderest and her youngest;
intended wholly and solely for those whose head is to be reached
through the heart. Its appeal was not to intellect; it sought to win
the affectionate through their affections, the sympathizing through
their sympathies: St. Vincent de Paul, gathering his orphans about him,
never spoke more sweetly.
I remember one capital inducement to apostacy was held out in the fact
that the Catholic who had lost dear friends by death could enjoy the
unspeakable solace of praying them out of purgatory. The writer did not
touch on the firmer peace of those whose belief dispenses with
purgatory altogether: but I thought of this; and, on the whole,
preferred the latter doctrine as the most consolatory. The little book
amused, and did not painfully displease me. It was a canting,
sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered my
gloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked
wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless
lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I
had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same
seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was no
bad man, and while perpetually betraying the trained cunning—the cloven
hoof of his system—I should pause before accusing himself of
insincerity. His judgment, however, wanted surgical props; it was
rickety.
I smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from the
ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own
disinclination, not to say disability, to meet these melting favours.
Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of “Père Silas.” A
fly-leaf bore in small, but clear and well-known pencil characters:
“From P. C. D. E. to L—y.” And when I saw this I laughed: but not in my
former spirit. I was revived.
A mortal bewilderment cleared suddenly from my head and vision; the
solution of the Sphinx-riddle was won; the conjunction of those two
names, Père Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The penitent
had been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered to
keep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole
narrative of our late interview had been drawn from him; he had avowed
the covenant of fraternity, and spoken of his adopted sister. How could
such a covenant, such adoption, be sanctioned by the Church? Fraternal
communion with a heretic! I seemed to hear Père Silas annulling the
unholy pact; warning his penitent of its perils; entreating, enjoining
reserve, nay, by the authority of his office, and in the name, and by
the memory of all M. Emanuel held most dear and sacred, commanding the
enforcement of that new system whose frost had pierced to the marrow of
my bones.
These may not seem pleasant hypotheses; yet, by comparison, they were
welcome. The vision of a ghostly troubler hovering in the background,
was as nothing, matched with the fear of spontaneous change arising in
M. Paul himself.
At this distance of time, I cannot be sure how far the above
conjectures were self-suggested: or in what measure they owed their
origin and confirmation to another quarter. Help was not wanting.
This evening there was no bright sunset: west and east were one cloud;
no summer night-mist, blue, yet rose-tinged, softened the distance; a
clammy fog from the marshes crept grey round Villette. To-night the
watering-pot might rest in its niche by the well: a small rain had been
drizzling all the afternoon, and still it fell fast and quietly. This
was no weather for rambling in the wet alleys, under the dripping
trees; and I started to hear Sylvie’s sudden bark in the garden—her
bark of welcome. Surely she was not accompanied and yet this glad,
quick bark was never uttered, save in homage to one presence.
Through the glass door and the arching berceau, I commanded the deep
vista of the allée défendue: thither rushed Sylvie, glistening through
its gloom like a white guelder-rose. She ran to and fro, whining,
springing, harassing little birds amongst the bushes. I watched five
minutes; no fulfilment followed the omen. I returned to my books;
Sylvie’s sharp bark suddenly ceased. Again I looked up. She was
standing not many yards distant, wagging her white feathery tail as
fast as the muscle would work, and intently watching the operations of
a spade, plied fast by an indefatigable hand. There was M. Emanuel,
bent over the soil, digging in the wet mould amongst the rain-laden and
streaming shrubs, working as hard as if his day’s pittance were yet to
earn by the literal sweat of his brow.
In this sign I read a ruffled mood. He would dig thus in frozen snow on
the coldest winter day, when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whether
of nervous excitation, or, sad thoughts of self-reproach. He would dig
by the hour, with knit brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, or
open his lips.
Sylvie watched till she was tired. Again scampering devious, bounding