Villette
states of perception, like that of this instant—her habitual disguise,
her mask and her domino, were to me a mere network reticulated with
holes; and I saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, and
ignoble. She quietly retreated from me: meek and self-possessed, though
very uneasy, she said, “If I would not be persuaded to take rest, she
must reluctantly leave me.” Which she did incontinent, perhaps even
more glad to get away, than I was to see her vanish.
This was the sole flash-eliciting, truth-extorting, rencontre which
ever occurred between me and Madame Beck: this short night-scene was
never repeated. It did not one whit change her manner to me. I do not
know that she revenged it. I do not know that she hated me the worse
for my fell candour. I think she bucklered herself with the secret
philosophy of her strong mind, and resolved to forget what it irked her
to remember. I know that to the end of our mutual lives there occurred
no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery passage.
That night passed: all nights—even the starless night before
dissolution—must wear away. About six o’clock, the hour which called up
the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold,
fresh well-water. Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror-glass, set
in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my
cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids
swollen and purple.
On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me—my heart
seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously
certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why
and for whom I despaired.
“Isabelle,” the child whom I had once nursed in sickness, approached
me. Would she, too, mock me!
“Que vous êtes pâle! Vous êtes donc bien malade, Mademoiselle!” said
she, putting her finger in her mouth, and staring with a wistful
stupidity which at the moment seemed to me more beautiful than the
keenest intelligence.
Isabelle did not long stand alone in the recommendation of ignorance:
before the day was over, I gathered cause of gratitude towards the
whole blind household. The multitude have something else to do than to
read hearts and interpret dark sayings. Who wills, may keep his own
counsel—be his own secret’s sovereign. In the course of that day, proof
met me on proof, not only that the cause of my present sorrow was
unguessed, but that my whole inner life for the last six months, was
still mine only. It was not known—it had not been noted—that I held in
peculiar value one life among all lives. Gossip had passed me by;
curiosity had looked me over; both subtle influences, hovering always
round, had never become centred upon me. A given organization may live
in a full fever-hospital, and escape typhus. M. Emanuel had come and
gone: I had been taught and sought; in season and out of season he had
called me, and I had obeyed him: “M. Paul wants Miss Lucy”—“Miss Lucy
is with M. Paul”—such had been the perpetual bulletin; and nobody
commented, far less condemned. Nobody hinted, nobody jested. Madame
Beck read the riddle: none else resolved it. What I now suffered was
called illness—a headache: I accepted the baptism.
But what bodily illness was ever like this pain? This certainty that he
was gone without a farewell—this cruel conviction that fate and
pursuing furies—a woman’s envy and a priest’s bigotry—would suffer me
to see him no more? What wonder that the second evening found me like
the first—untamed, tortured, again pacing a solitary room in an
unalterable passion of silent desolation?
Madame Beck did not herself summon me to bed that night—she did not
come near me: she sent Ginevra Fanshawe—a more efficient agent for the
purpose she could not have employed. Ginevra’s first words—“Is your
headache very bad to-night?” (for Ginevra, like the rest, thought I had
a headache—an intolerable headache which made me frightfully white in
the face, and insanely restless in the foot)—her first words, I say,
inspired the impulse to flee anywhere, so that it were only out of
reach. And soon, what followed—plaints about her own
headaches—completed the business.
I went up-stairs. Presently I was in my bed—my miserable bed—haunted
with quick scorpions. I had not been laid down five minutes, when
another emissary arrived: Goton came, bringing me something to drink. I
was consumed with thirst—I drank eagerly; the beverage was sweet, but I
tasted a drug.
“Madame says it will make you sleep, chou-chou,” said Goton, as she
received back the emptied cup.
Ah! the sedative had been administered. In fact, they had given me a
strong opiate. I was to be held quiet for one night.
The household came to bed, the night-light was lit, the dormitory
hushed. Sleep soon reigned: over those pillows, sleep won an easy
supremacy: contented sovereign over heads and hearts which did not
ache—he passed by the unquiet.
The drug wrought. I know not whether Madame had overcharged or
under-charged the dose; its result was not that she intended. Instead
of stupor, came excitement. I became alive to new thought—to reverie
peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their
bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons. Imagination was
roused from her rest, and she came forth impetuous and venturous. With
scorn she looked on Matter, her mate—“Rise!” she said. “Sluggard! this
night I will have _my_ will; nor shalt thou prevail.”
“Look forth and view the night!” was her cry; and when I lifted the
heavy blind from the casement close at hand—with her own royal gesture,
she showed me a moon supreme, in an element deep and splendid.
To my gasping senses she made the glimmering gloom, the narrow limits,
the oppressive heat of the dormitory, intolerable. She lured me to
leave this den and follow her forth into dew, coolness, and glory.
She brought upon me a strange vision of Villette at midnight.
Especially she showed the park, the summer-park, with its long alleys
all silent, lone and safe; among these lay a huge stone basin—that
basin I knew, and beside which I had often stood—deep-set in the
tree-shadows, brimming with cool water, clear, with a green, leafy,
rushy bed. What of all this? The park-gates were shut up, locked,
sentinelled: the place could not be entered.
Could it not? A point worth considering; and while revolving it, I
mechanically dressed. Utterly incapable of sleeping or lying
still—excited from head to foot—what could I do better than dress?
The gates were locked, soldiers set before them: was there, then, no
admission to the park?
The other day, in walking past, I had seen, without then attending to
the circumstance, a gap in the paling—one stake broken down: I now saw
this gap again in recollection—saw it very plainly—the narrow,
irregular aperture visible between the stems of the lindens, planted
orderly as a colonnade. A man could not have made his way through that
aperture, nor could a stout woman, perhaps not Madame Beck; but I
thought I might: I fancied I should like to try, and once within, at
this hour the whole park would be mine—the moonlight, midnight park!
How soundly the dormitory slept! What deep slumbers! What quiet
breathing! How very still the whole large house! What was the time? I
felt restless to know. There stood a clock in the classe below: what
hindered me from venturing down to consult it? By such a moon, its
large white face and jet black figures must be vividly distinct.
As for hindrance to this step, there offered not so much as a creaking
hinge or a clicking latch. On these hot July nights, close air could
not be tolerated, and the chamber-door stood wide open. Will the
dormitory-planks sustain my tread untraitorous? Yes. I know wherever a
board is loose, and will avoid it. The oak staircase creaks somewhat as
I descend, but not much:—I am in the carré.
The great classe-doors are close shut: they are bolted. On the other
hand, the entrance to the corridor stands open. The classes seem to my
thought, great dreary jails, buried far back beyond thoroughfares, and
for me, filled with spectral and intolerable Memories, laid miserable
amongst their straw and their manacles. The corridor offers a cheerful
vista, leading to the high vestibule which opens direct upon the
street.
Hush!—the clock strikes. Ghostly deep as is the stillness of this
convent, it is only eleven. While my ear follows to silence the hum of
the last stroke, I catch faintly from the built-out capital, a sound
like bells or like a band—a sound where sweetness, where victory, where
mourning blend. Oh, to approach this music nearer, to listen to it
alone by the rushy basin! Let me go—oh, let me go! What hinders, what
does not aid freedom?
There, in the corridor, hangs my garden-costume, my large hat, my
shawl. There is no lock on the huge, heavy, porte-cochère; there is no
key to seek: it fastens with a sort of spring-bolt, not to be opened
from the outside, but which, from within, may be noiselessly withdrawn.
Can I manage it? It yields to my hand, yields with propitious facility.
I wonder as that portal seems almost spontaneously to unclose—I wonder
as I cross the threshold and step on the paved street, wonder at the
strange ease with which this prison has been forced. It seems as if I
had been pioneered invisibly, as if some dissolving force had gone
before me: for myself, I have scarce made an effort.
Quiet Rue Fossette! I find on this pavement that wanderer-wooing summer
night of which I mused; I see its moon over me; I feel its dew in the
air. But here I cannot stay; I am still too near old haunts: so close
under the dungeon, I can hear the prisoners moan. This solemn peace is
not what I seek, it is not what I can bear: to me the face of that sky
bears the aspect of a world’s death. The park also will be calm—I know,
a mortal serenity prevails everywhere—yet let me seek the park.
I took a route well known, and went up towards the palatial and royal
Haute-Ville; thence the music I had heard certainly floated; it was
hushed now, but it might re-waken. I went on: neither band nor bell
music came to meet me; another sound replaced it, a sound like a strong
tide, a great flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, movement
gathered, chimes pealed—to what was I coming? Entering on the level of
a Grande Place, I found myself, with the suddenness of magic, plunged
amidst a gay, living, joyous crowd.
Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems
abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town, by her own
flambeaux, beholds her own splendour—gay dresses, grand equipages, fine
horses and gallant riders throng the bright streets. I see even scores
of masks. It is a strange scene, stranger than dreams. But where is the
park?—I ought to be near it. In the midst of this glare the park must
be shadowy and calm—_there_, at least, are neither torches, lamps, nor
crowd?
I was asking this question when an open carriage passed me filled with
known faces. Through the deep throng it could pass but slowly; the
spirited horses fretted in their curbed ardour. I saw the occupants of
that carriage well: me they could not see, or, at least, not know,
folded close in my large shawl, screened with my straw hat (in that
motley crowd no dress was noticeably strange). I saw the Count de
Bassompierre; I saw my godmother, handsomely apparelled, comely and
cheerful; I saw, too, Paulina Mary, compassed with the triple halo of
her beauty, her youth, and her happiness. In looking on her countenance
of joy, and eyes of festal light, one scarce remembered to note the
gala elegance of what she wore; I know only that the drapery floating
about her was all white and light and bridal; seated opposite to her I