Villette
In my infatuation, I said, “Truth, you are a good mistress to your
faithful servants! While a Lie pressed me, how I suffered! Even when
the Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the fancy, and warm
to the feelings, it wasted me with hourly torment. The persuasion that
affection was won could not be divorced from the dread that, by another
turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth stripped away Falsehood, and
Flattery, and Expectancy, and here I stand—free!”
Nothing remained now but to take my freedom to my chamber, to carry it
with me to my bed and see what I could make of it. The play was not
yet, indeed, quite played out. I might have waited and watched longer
that love-scene under the trees, that sylvan courtship. Had there been
nothing of love in the demonstration, my Fancy in this hour was so
generous, so creative, she could have modelled for it the most salient
lineaments, and given it the deepest life and highest colour of
passion. But I _would_ not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would
not violate my nature. And then—something tore me so cruelly under my
shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and
talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt
jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr.
John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears,
while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of harmony still
acknowledged in it a charm. This was an outrage. The love born of
beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare
to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life
after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy,
consolidated by affection’s pure and durable alloy, submitted by
intellect to intellect’s own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own
process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at
Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in
_this_ Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its
culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.
I turned from the group of trees and the “merrie companie” in its
shade. Midnight was long past; the concert was over, the crowds were
thinning. I followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and well-lit
Haute-Ville (still well lit, this it seems was to be a “nuit blanche”
in Villette), I sought the dim lower quarter.
Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moonlight—forgotten in the
park—here once more flowed in upon perception. High she rode, and calm
and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fête, the
fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for
an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival
lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet,
bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray
she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting. She
and those stars seemed to me at once the types and witnesses of truth
all regnant. The night-sky lit her reign: like its slow-wheeling
progress, advanced her victory—that onward movement which has been, and
is, and will be from eternity to eternity.
These oil-twinkling streets are very still: I like them for their
lowliness and peace. Homeward-bound burghers pass me now and then, but
these companies are pedestrians, make little noise, and are soon gone.
So well do I love Villette under her present aspect, not willingly
would I re-enter under a roof, but that I am bent on pursuing my
strange adventure to a successful close, and quietly regaining my bed
in the great dormitory, before Madame Beck comes home.
Only one street lies between me and the Rue Fossette; as I enter it,
for the first time, the sound of a carriage tears up the deep peace of
this quarter. It comes this way—comes very fast. How loud sounds its
rattle on the paved path! The street is narrow, and I keep carefully to
the causeway. The carriage thunders past, but what do I see, or fancy I
see, as it rushes by? Surely something white fluttered from that
window—surely a hand waved a handkerchief. Was that signal meant for
me? Am I known? Who could recognise me? That is not M. de
Bassompierre’s carriage, nor Mrs. Bretton’s; and besides, neither the
Hôtel Crécy nor the château of La Terrasse lies in that direction.
Well, I have no time for conjecture; I must hurry home.
Gaining the Rue Fossette, reaching the pensionnat, all there was still;
no fiacre had yet arrived with Madame and Désirée. I had left the great
door ajar; should I find it thus? Perhaps the wind or some other
accident may have thrown it to with sufficient force to start the
spring-bolt? In that case, hopeless became admission; my adventure must
issue in catastrophe. I lightly pushed the heavy leaf; would it yield?
Yes. As soundless, as unresisting, as if some propitious genius had
waited on a sesame-charm, in the vestibule within. Entering with bated
breath, quietly making all fast, shoelessly mounting the staircase, I
sought the dormitory, and reached my couch.
Ay! I reached it, and once more drew a free inspiration. The next
moment, I almost shrieked—almost, but not quite, thank Heaven!
Throughout the dormitory, throughout the house, there reigned at this
hour the stillness of death. All slept, and in such hush, it seemed
that none dreamed. Stretched on the nineteen beds lay nineteen forms,
at full-length and motionless. On mine—the twentieth couch—nothing
_ought_ to have lain: I had left it void, and void should have found
it. What, then; do I see between the half-drawn curtains? What dark,
usurping shape, supine, long, and strange? Is it a robber who has made
his way through the open street-door, and lies there in wait? It looks
very black, I think it looks—not human. Can it be a wandering dog that
has come in from the street and crept and nestled hither? Will it
spring, will it leap out if I approach? Approach I must. Courage! One
step!—
My head reeled, for by the faint night-lamp, I saw stretched on my bed
the old phantom—the NUN.
A cry at this moment might have ruined me. Be the spectacle what it
might, I could afford neither consternation, scream, nor swoon.
Besides, I was not overcome. Tempered by late incidents, my nerves
disdained hysteria. Warm from illuminations, and music, and thronging
thousands, thoroughly lashed up by a new scourge, I defied spectra. In
a moment, without exclamation, I had rushed on the haunted couch;
nothing leaped out, or sprung, or stirred; all the movement was mine,
so was all the life, the reality, the substance, the force; as my
instinct felt. I tore her up—the incubus! I held her on high—the
goblin! I shook her loose—the mystery! And down she fell—down all
around me—down in shreds and fragments—and I trode upon her.
Here again—behold the branchless tree, the unstabled Rosinante; the
film of cloud, the flicker of moonshine. The long nun proved a long
bolster dressed in a long black stole, and artfully invested with a
white veil. The garments in very truth, strange as it may seem, were
genuine nun’s garments, and by some hand they had been disposed with a
view to illusion. Whence came these vestments? Who contrived this
artifice? These questions still remained. To the head-bandage was
pinned a slip of paper: it bore in pencil these mocking words—
“The nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe her wardrobe. She will be
seen in the Rue Fossette no more.”
And what and who was she that had haunted me? She, I had actually seen
three times. Not a woman of my acquaintance had the stature of that
ghost. She was not of a female height. Not to any man I knew could the
machination, for a moment, be attributed.
Still mystified beyond expression, but as thoroughly, as suddenly,
relieved from all sense of the spectral and unearthly; scorning also to
wear out my brain with the fret of a trivial though insoluble riddle, I
just bundled together stole, veil, and bandages, thrust them beneath my
pillow, lay down, listened till I heard the wheels of Madame’s
home-returning fiacre, then turned, and worn out by many nights’
vigils, conquered, too, perhaps, by the now reacting narcotic, I deeply
slept.
CHAPTER XL.
THE HAPPY PAIR.
The day succeeding this remarkable Midsummer night, proved no common
day. I do not mean that it brought signs in heaven above, or portents
on the earth beneath; nor do I allude to meteorological phenomena, to
storm, flood, or whirlwind. On the contrary: the sun rose jocund, with
a July face. Morning decked her beauty with rubies, and so filled her
lap with roses, that they fell from her in showers, making her path
blush: the Hours woke fresh as nymphs, and emptying on the early hills
their dew-vials, they stepped out dismantled of vapour: shadowless,
azure, and glorious, they led the sun’s steeds on a burning and
unclouded course.
In short, it was as fine a day as the finest summer could boast; but I
doubt whether I was not the sole inhabitant of the Rue Fossette, who
cared or remembered to note this pleasant fact. Another thought busied
all other heads; a thought, indeed, which had its share in my
meditations; but this master consideration, not possessing for me so
entire a novelty, so overwhelming a suddenness, especially so dense a
mystery, as it offered to the majority of my co-speculators thereon,
left me somewhat more open than the rest to any collateral observation
or impression.
Still, while walking in the garden, feeling the sunshine, and marking
the blooming and growing plants, I pondered the same subject the whole
house discussed.
What subject?
Merely this. When matins came to be said, there was a place vacant in
the first rank of boarders. When breakfast was served, there remained a
coffee-cup unclaimed. When the housemaid made the beds, she found in
one, a bolster laid lengthwise, clad in a cap and night-gown; and when
Ginevra Fanshawe’s music-mistress came early, as usual, to give the
morning lesson, that accomplished and promising young person, her
pupil, failed utterly to be forthcoming.
High and low was Miss Fanshawe sought; through length and breadth was
the house ransacked; vainly; not a trace, not an indication, not so
much as a scrap of a billet rewarded the search; the nymph was
vanished, engulfed in the past night, like a shooting star swallowed up
by darkness.
Deep was the dismay of surveillante teachers, deeper the horror of the
defaulting directress. Never had I seen Madame Beck so pale or so
appalled. Here was a blow struck at her tender part, her weak side;
here was damage done to her interest. How, too, had the untoward event
happened? By what outlet had the fugitive taken wing? Not a casement
was found unfastened, not a pane of glass broken; all the doors were
bolted secure. Never to this day has Madame Beck obtained satisfaction
on this point, nor indeed has anybody else concerned, save and
excepting one, Lucy Snowe, who could not forget how, to facilitate a
certain enterprise, a certain great door had been drawn softly to its
lintel, closed, indeed, but neither bolted nor secure. The thundering
carriage-and-pair encountered were now likewise recalled, as well as
that puzzling signal, the waved handkerchief.
From these premises, and one or two others, inaccessible to any but
myself, I could draw but one inference. It was a case of elopement.
Morally certain on this head, and seeing Madame Beck’s profound
embarrassment, I at last communicated my conviction. Having alluded to
M. de Hamal’s suit, I found, as I expected, that Madame Beck was
perfectly au fait to that affair. She had long since discussed it with
Mrs. Cholmondeley, and laid her own responsibility in the business on