Villette
Shall I yet see him before he goes? Will he bear me in mind? Does he
purpose to come? Will this day—will the next hour bring him? or must I
again assay that corroding pain of long attent—that rude agony of
rupture at the close, that mute, mortal wrench, which, in at once
uprooting hope and doubt, shakes life; while the hand that does the
violence cannot be caressed to pity, because absence interposes her
barrier!
It was the Feast of the Assumption; no school was held. The boarders
and teachers, after attending mass in the morning, were gone a long
walk into the country to take their goûter, or afternoon meal, at some
farm-house. I did not go with them, for now but two days remained ere
the _Paul et Virginie_ must sail, and I was clinging to my last chance,
as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last raft or cable.
There was some joiners’ work to do in the first classe, some bench or
desk to repair; holidays were often turned to account for the
performance of these operations, which could not be executed when the
rooms were filled with pupils. As I sat solitary, purposing to adjourn
to the garden and leave the coast clear, but too listless to fulfil my
own intent, I heard the workmen coming.
Foreign artisans and servants do everything by couples: I believe it
would take two Labassecourien carpenters to drive a nail. While tying
on my bonnet, which had hitherto hung by its ribbons from my idle hand,
I vaguely and momentarily wondered to hear the step of but one
“ouvrier.” I noted, too—as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary
leisure to note the merest trifles—that this man wore shoes, and not
sabots: I concluded that it must be the master-carpenter, coming to
inspect before he sent his journeymen. I threw round me my scarf. He
advanced; he opened the door; my back was towards it; I felt a little
thrill—a curious sensation, too quick and transient to be analyzed. I
turned, I stood in the supposed master-artisan’s presence: looking
towards the door-way, I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes
printed upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.
Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary Heaven bring to the
suppliant no fulfilment. Once haply in life, one golden gift falls
prone in the lap—one boon full and bright, perfect from Fruition’s
mint.
M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he probably purposed to travel—a
surtout, guarded with velvet; I thought him prepared for instant
departure, and yet I had understood that two days were yet to run
before the ship sailed. He looked well and cheerful. He looked kind and
benign: he came in with eagerness; he was close to me in one second; he
was all amity. It might be his bridegroom mood which thus brightened
him. Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If
this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced,
unnatural distance. I loved him well—too well not to smite out of my
path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind
farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes,
would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it
would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it—I
would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.
The interview would be short, of course: he would say to me just what
he had said to each of the assembled pupils; he would take and hold my
hand two minutes; he would touch my cheek with his lips for the first,
last, only time—and then—no more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then
the wide separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to
him—across which, haply, he would not glance, to remember me.
He took my hand in one of his, with the other he put back my bonnet; he
looked into my face, his luminous smile went out, his lips expressed
something almost like the wordless language of a mother who finds a
child greatly and unexpectedly changed, broken with illness, or worn
out by want. A check supervened.
“Paul, Paul!” said a woman’s hurried voice behind, “Paul, come into the
salon; I have yet a great many things to say to you—conversation for
the whole day—and so has Victor; and Josef is here. Come Paul, come to
your friends.”
Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance or an inscrutable
instinct, pressed so near, she almost thrust herself between me and M.
Emanuel.
“Come, Paul!” she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like
a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I
thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to
feel what defied suppression, I cried—
“My heart will break!”
What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another
fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the
whisper, “Trust me!” lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep
sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet
with relief—I wept.
“Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it
will pass,” said the calm Madame Beck.
To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being
left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply,
harshly, and briefly—
“Laissez-moi!” in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but
life-giving.
“Laissez-moi!” he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial
muscles all quivering as he spoke.
“But this will never do,” said Madame, with sternness. More sternly
rejoined her kinsman—
“Sortez d’ici!”
“I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him,” she
threatened pertinaciously.
“Femme!” cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his
highest and most excited key, “Femme! sortez à l’instant!”
He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what
I had yet felt.
“What you do is wrong,” pursued Madame; “it is an act characteristic of
men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive,
injudicious, inconsistent—a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in
the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.”
“You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me,” said he, “but
you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste,” he continued less
fiercely, “be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face,
and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends;
in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of
sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what
I see; it _must_ have and give solace. _Leave me!_”
This time, in the “_leave me_” there was an intonation so bitter and so
imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one
moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him
dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was
opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul’s face a quick
rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement;
it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his
hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the
room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.
The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to
wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to
time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more
myself—re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not
hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.
“It made you very sad then to lose your friend?” said he.
“It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur,” I said. “All these weary days
I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the
possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying
farewell!”
“Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck—that you do not know me? Must
I show and teach you my character? You _will_ have proof that I can be
a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still in
mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is
ready. I come to justify myself.”
“Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, Monsieur; I can listen
now.”
“Then, in the first place, you must go out with me a good distance into
the town. I came on purpose to fetch you.”
Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the
semblance of an objection, I re-tied my bonnet: I was ready.
The route he took was by the boulevards: he several times made me sit
down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I
was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.
“All these weary days,” said he, repeating my words, with a gentle,
kindly mimicry of my voice and foreign accent, not new from his lips,
and of which the playful banter never wounded, not even when coupled,
as it often was, with the assertion, that however I might _write_ his
language, I _spoke_ and always should speak it imperfectly and
hesitatingly. “‘All these weary days’ I have not for one hour forgotten
you. Faithful women err in this, that they think themselves the sole
faithful of God’s creatures. On a very fervent and living truth to
myself, I, too, till lately scarce dared count, from any quarter;
but——look at me.”
I lifted my happy eyes: they _were_ happy now, or they would have been
no interpreters of my heart.
“Well,” said he, after some seconds’ scrutiny, “there is no denying
that signature: Constancy wrote it: her pen is of iron. Was the record
painful?”
“Severely painful,” I said, with truth. “Withdraw her hand, Monsieur; I
can bear its inscribing force no more.”
“Elle est toute pâle,” said he, speaking to himself; “cette figure-là
me fait mal.”
“Ah! I am not pleasant to look at——?”
I could not help saying this; the words came unbidden: I never remember
the time when I had not a haunting dread of what might be the degree of
my outward deficiency; this dread pressed me at the moment with special
force.
A great softness passed upon his countenance; his violet eyes grew
suffused and glistening under their deep Spanish lashes: he started up;
“Let us walk on.”
“Do I displease your eyes _much_?” I took courage to urge: the point
had its vital import for me.
He stopped, and gave me a short, strong answer; an answer which
silenced, subdued, yet profoundly satisfied. Ever after that I knew
what I was for _him_; and what I might be for the rest of the world, I
ceased painfully to care. Was it weak to lay so much stress on an
opinion about appearance? I fear it might be; I fear it was; but in
that case I must avow no light share of weakness. I must own great fear
of displeasing—a strong wish moderately to please M. Paul.
Whither we rambled, I scarce knew. Our walk was long, yet seemed short;
the path was pleasant, the day lovely. M. Emanuel talked of his
voyage—he thought of staying away three years. On his return from
Guadaloupe, he looked forward to release from liabilities and a clear
course; and what did I purpose doing in the interval of his absence? he
asked. I had talked once, he reminded me, of trying to be independent
and keeping a little school of my own: had I dropped the idea?
“Indeed, I had not: I was doing my best to save what would enable me to
put it in practice.”
“He did not like leaving me in the Rue Fossette; he feared I should
miss him there too much—I should feel desolate—I should grow sad—?”
This was certain; but I promised to do my best to endure.
“Still,” said he, speaking low, “there is another objection to your
present residence. I should wish to write to you sometimes: it would
not be well to have any uncertainty about the safe transmission of
letters; and in the Rue Fossette—in short, our Catholic discipline in
certain matters—though justifiable and expedient—might possibly, under