Villette
to take lessons in English; and as she is rich, she will pay
handsomely. I mean my god-daughter and ward, Justine Marie Sauveur.”
What is in a name?—what in three words? Till this moment I had listened
with living joy—I had answered with gleeful quickness; a name froze me;
three words struck me mute. The effect could not be hidden, and indeed
I scarce tried to hide it.
“What now?” said M. Paul.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing! Your countenance changes: your colour and your very eyes
fade. Nothing! You must be ill; you have some suffering; tell me what.”
I had nothing to tell.
He drew his chair nearer. He did not grow vexed, though I continued
silent and icy. He tried to win a word; he entreated with perseverance,
he waited with patience.
“Justine Marie is a good girl,” said he, “docile and amiable; not
quick—but you will like her.”
“I think not. I think she must not come here.”
Such was my speech.
“Do you wish to puzzle me? Do you know her? But, in truth, there _is_
something. Again you are pale as that statue. Rely on Paul Carlos; tell
him the grief.”
His chair touched mine; his hand, quietly advanced, turned me towards
him.
“Do you know Marie Justine?” said he again.
The name re-pronounced by his lips overcame me unaccountably. It did
not prostrate—no, it stirred me up, running with haste and heat through
my veins—recalling an hour of quick pain, many days and nights of
heart-sickness. Near me as he now sat, strongly and closely as he had
long twined his life in mine—far as had progressed, and near as was
achieved our minds’ and affections’ assimilation—the very suggestion of
interference, of heart-separation, could be heard only with a
fermenting excitement, an impetuous throe, a disdainful resolve, an
ire, a resistance of which no human eye or cheek could hide the flame,
nor any truth-accustomed human tongue curb the cry.
“I want to tell you something,” I said: “I want to tell you all.”
“Speak, Lucy; come near; speak. Who prizes you, if I do not? Who is
your friend, if not Emanuel? Speak!”
I spoke. All escaped from my lips. I lacked not words now; fast I
narrated; fluent I told my tale; it streamed on my tongue. I went back
to the night in the park; I mentioned the medicated draught—why it was
given—its goading effect—how it had torn rest from under my head,
shaken me from my couch, carried me abroad with the lure of a vivid yet
solemn fancy—a summer-night solitude on turf, under trees, near a deep,
cool lakelet. I told the scene realized; the crowd, the masques, the
music, the lamps, the splendours, the guns booming afar, the bells
sounding on high. All I had encountered I detailed, all I had
recognised, heard, and seen; how I had beheld and watched himself: how
I listened, how much heard, what conjectured; the whole history, in
brief, summoned to his confidence, rushed thither, truthful, literal,
ardent, bitter.
Still as I narrated, instead of checking, he incited me to proceed, he
spurred me by the gesture, the smile, the half-word. Before I had half
done, he held both my hands, he consulted my eyes with a most piercing
glance: there was something in his face which tended neither to calm
nor to put me down; he forgot his own doctrine, he forsook his own
system of repression when I most challenged its exercise. I think I
deserved strong reproof; but when have we our deserts? I merited
severity; he looked indulgence. To my very self I seemed imperious and
unreasonable, for I forbade Justine Marie my door and roof; he smiled,
betraying delight. Warm, jealous, and haughty, I knew not till now that
my nature had such a mood: he gathered me near his heart. I was full of
faults; he took them and me all home. For the moment of utmost mutiny,
he reserved the one deep spell of peace. These words caressed my ear:—
“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on
earth.”
We walked back to the Rue Fossette by moonlight—such moonlight as fell
on Eden—shining through the shades of the Great Garden, and haply
gilding a path glorious for a step divine—a Presence nameless. Once in
their lives some men and women go back to these first fresh days of our
great Sire and Mother—taste that grand morning’s dew—bathe in its
sunrise.
In the course of the walk I was told how Justine Marie Sauveur had
always been regarded with the affection proper to a daughter—how, with
M. Paul’s consent, she had been affianced for months to one Heinrich
Mühler, a wealthy young German merchant, and was to be married in the
course of a year. Some of M. Emanuel’s relations and connections would,
indeed, it seems, have liked him to marry her, with a view to securing
her fortune in the family; but to himself the scheme was repugnant, and
the idea totally inadmissible.
We reached Madame Beck’s door. Jean Baptiste’s clock tolled nine. At
this hour, in this house, eighteen months since, had this man at my
side bent before me, looked into my face and eyes, and arbitered my
destiny. This very evening he had again stooped, gazed, and decreed.
How different the look—how far otherwise the fate!
He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to have spread over me its
beam like a banner. Once—unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and
strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the
manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his influence, and living
by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by
heart—I preferred him before all humanity.
We parted: he gave me his pledge, and then his farewell. We parted: the
next day—he sailed.
CHAPTER XLII.
FINIS.
Man cannot prophesy. Love is no oracle. Fear sometimes imagines a vain
thing. Those years of absence! How had I sickened over their
anticipation! The woe they must bring seemed certain as death. I knew
the nature of their course: I never had doubt how it would harrow as it
went. The juggernaut on his car towered there a grim load. Seeing him
draw nigh, burying his broad wheels in the oppressed soil—I, the
prostrate votary—felt beforehand the annihilating craunch.
Strange to say—strange, yet true, and owning many parallels in life’s
experience—that anticipatory craunch proved all—yes—nearly _all_ the
torture. The great Juggernaut, in his great chariot, drew on lofty,
loud, and sullen. He passed quietly, like a shadow sweeping the sky, at
noon. Nothing but a chilling dimness was seen or felt. I looked up.
Chariot and demon charioteer were gone by; the votary still lived.
M. Emanuel was away three years. Reader, they were the three happiest
years of my life. Do you scout the paradox? Listen. I commenced my
school; I worked—I worked hard. I deemed myself the steward of his
property, and determined, God willing, to render a good account. Pupils
came—burghers at first—a higher class ere long. About the middle of the
second year an unexpected chance threw into my hands an additional
hundred pounds: one day I received from England a letter containing
that sum. It came from Mr. Marchmont, the cousin and heir of my dear
and dead mistress. He was just recovering from a dangerous illness; the
money was a peace-offering to his conscience, reproaching him in the
matter of, I know not what, papers or memoranda found after his
kinswoman’s death—naming or recommending Lucy Snowe. Mrs. Barrett had
given him my address. How far his conscience had been sinned against, I
never inquired. I asked no questions, but took the cash and made it
useful.
With this hundred pounds I ventured to take the house adjoining mine. I
would not leave that which M. Paul had chosen, in which he had left,
and where he expected again to find me. My externat became a
pensionnat; that also prospered.
The secret of my success did not lie so much in myself, in any
endowment, any power of mine, as in a new state of circumstances, a
wonderfully changed life, a relieved heart. The spring which moved my
energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle. At parting, I had
been left a legacy; such a thought for the present, such a hope for the
future, such a motive for a persevering, a laborious, an enterprising,
a patient and a brave course—I _could_ not flag. Few things shook me
now; few things had importance to vex, intimidate, or depress me: most
things pleased—mere trifles had a charm.
Do not think that this genial flame sustained itself, or lived wholly
on a bequeathed hope or a parting promise. A generous provider supplied
bounteous fuel. I was spared all chill, all stint; I was not suffered
to fear penury; I was not tried with suspense. By every vessel he
wrote; he wrote as he gave and as he loved, in full-handed,
full-hearted plenitude. He wrote because he liked to write; he did not
abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and
paper, because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her; because he was
faithful and thoughtful, because he was tender and true. There was no
sham and no cheat, and no hollow unreal in him. Apology never dropped
her slippery oil on his lips—never proffered, by his pen, her coward
feints and paltry nullities: he would give neither a stone, nor an
excuse—neither a scorpion; nor a disappointment; his letters were real
food that nourished, living water that refreshed.
And was I grateful? God knows! I believe that scarce a living being so
remembered, so sustained, dealt with in kind so constant, honourable
and noble, could be otherwise than grateful to the death.
Adherent to his own religion (in him was not the stuff of which is made
the facile apostate), he freely left me my pure faith. He did not tease
nor tempt. He said:—
“Remain a Protestant. My little English Puritan, I love Protestantism
in you. I own its severe charm. There is something in its ritual I
cannot receive myself, but it is the sole creed for ‘Lucy.’”
All Rome could not put into him bigotry, nor the Propaganda itself make
him a real Jesuit. He was born honest, and not false—artless, and not
cunning—a freeman, and not a slave. His tenderness had rendered him
ductile in a priest’s hands, his affection, his devotedness, his
sincere pious enthusiasm blinded his kind eyes sometimes, made him
abandon justice to himself to do the work of craft, and serve the ends
of selfishness; but these are faults so rare to find, so costly to
their owner to indulge, we scarce know whether they will not one day be
reckoned amongst the jewels.
And now the three years are past: M. Emanuel’s return is fixed. It is
Autumn; he is to be with me ere the mists of November come. My school
flourishes, my house is ready: I have made him a little library, filled
its shelves with the books he left in my care: I have cultivated out of
love for him (I was naturally no florist) the plants he preferred, and
some of them are yet in bloom. I thought I loved him when he went away;
I love him now in another degree: he is more my own.
The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere;
but—he is coming.
Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind
takes its autumn moan; but—he is coming.
The skies hang full and dark—a wrack sails from the west; the clouds
cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there
rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple as monarch in his
state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle
at its thickest—so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some
signs of the sky; I have noted them ever since childhood. God watch
that sail! Oh! guard it!
The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee—“keening” at every
window! It will rise—it will swell—it shrieks out long: wander as I may
through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing