Villette

R JOHN.

Madame Beck was a most consistent character; forbearing with all the
world, and tender to no part of it. Her own children drew her into no
deviation from the even tenor of her stoic calm. She was solicitous
about her family, vigilant for their interests and physical well-being;
but she never seemed to know the wish to take her little children upon
her lap, to press their rosy lips with her own, to gather them in a
genial embrace, to shower on them softly the benignant caress, the
loving word.

I have watched her sometimes sitting in the garden, viewing the little
bees afar off, as they walked in a distant alley with Trinette, their
bonne; in her mien spoke care and prudence. I know she often pondered
anxiously what she called “leur avenir;” but if the youngest, a puny
and delicate but engaging child, chancing to spy her, broke from its
nurse, and toddling down the walk, came all eager and laughing and
panting to clasp her knee, Madame would just calmly put out one hand,
so as to prevent inconvenient concussion from the child’s sudden onset:
“Prends garde, mon enfant!” she would say unmoved, patiently permit it
to stand near her a few moments, and then, without smile or kiss, or
endearing syllable, rise and lead it back to Trinette.

Her demeanour to the eldest girl was equally characteristic in another
way. This was a vicious child. “Quelle peste que cette Désirée! Quel
poison que cet enfant là!” were the expressions dedicated to her, alike
in kitchen and in schoolroom. Amongst her other endowments she boasted
an exquisite skill in the art, of provocation, sometimes driving her
bonne and the servants almost wild. She would steal to their attics,
open their drawers and boxes, wantonly tear their best caps and soil
their best shawls; she would watch her opportunity to get at the buffet
of the salle-à-manger, where she would smash articles of porcelain or
glass—or to the cupboard of the storeroom, where she would plunder the
preserves, drink the sweet wine, break jars and bottles, and so
contrive as to throw the onus of suspicion on the cook and the
kitchen-maid. All this when Madame saw, and of which when she received
report, her sole observation, uttered with matchless serenity, was:

“Désirée a besoin d’une surveillance toute particulière.” Accordingly
she kept this promising olive-branch a good deal at her side. Never
once, I believe, did she tell her faithfully of her faults, explain the
evil of such habits, and show the results which must thence ensue.
Surveillance must work the whole cure. It failed of course. Désirée was
kept in some measure from the servants, but she teased and pillaged her
mamma instead. Whatever belonging to Madame’s work-table or toilet she
could lay her hands on, she stole and hid. Madame saw all this, but she
still pretended not to see: she had not rectitude of soul to confront
the child with her vices. When an article disappeared whose value
rendered restitution necessary, she would profess to think that Désirée
had taken it away in play, and beg her to restore it. Désirée was not
to be so cheated: she had learned to bring falsehood to the aid of
theft, and would deny having touched the brooch, ring, or scissors.
Carrying on the hollow system, the mother would calmly assume an air of
belief, and afterwards ceaselessly watch and dog the child till she
tracked her: to her hiding-places—some hole in the garden-wall—some
chink or cranny in garret or out-house. This done, Madame would send
Désirée out for a walk with her bonne, and profit by her absence to
rob the robber. Désirée proved herself the true daughter of her astute
parent, by never suffering either her countenance or manner to betray
the least sign of mortification on discovering the loss.

The second child, Fifine, was said to be like its dead father.
Certainly, though the mother had given it her healthy frame, her blue
eye and ruddy cheek, not from her was derived its moral being. It was
an honest, gleeful little soul: a passionate, warm-tempered, bustling
creature it was too, and of the sort likely to blunder often into
perils and difficulties. One day it bethought itself to fall from top
to bottom of a steep flight of stone steps; and when Madame, hearing
the noise (she always heard every noise), issued from the
salle-à-manger and picked it up, she said quietly,—“Cet enfant a un os
de cassé.”

At first we hoped this was not the case. It was, however, but too true:
one little plump arm hung powerless.

“Let Meess” (meaning me) “take her,” said Madame; “et qu’on aille tout
de suite chercher un fiacre.”

In a fiacre she promptly, but with admirable coolness and
self-possession, departed to fetch a surgeon.

It appeared she did not find the family-surgeon at home; but that
mattered not: she sought until she laid her hand on a substitute to her
mind, and brought him back with her. Meantime I had cut the child’s
sleeve from its arm, undressed and put it to bed.

We none of us, I suppose (by we I mean the bonne, the cook, the
portress, and myself, all which personages were now gathered in the
small and heated chamber), looked very scrutinizingly at the new doctor
when he came into the room. I, at least, was taken up with endeavouring
to soothe Fifine; whose cries (for she had good lungs) were appalling
to hear. These cries redoubled in intensity as the stranger approached
her bed; when he took her up, “Let alone!” she cried passionately, in
her broken English (for she spoke English as did the other children).
“I will not you: I will Dr. Pillule!”

“And Dr. Pillule is my very good friend,” was the answer, in perfect
English; “but he is busy at a place three leagues off, and I am come in
his stead. So now, when we get a little calmer, we must commence
business; and we will soon have that unlucky little arm bandaged and in
right order.”

Hereupon he called for a glass of eau sucrée, fed her with some
teaspoonfuls of the sweet liquid (Fifine was a frank gourmande; anybody
could win her heart through her palate), promised her more when the
operation should be over, and promptly went to work. Some assistance
being needed, he demanded it of the cook, a robust, strong-armed woman;
but she, the portress, and the nurse instantly fled. I did not like to
touch that small, tortured limb, but thinking there was no alternative,
my hand was already extended to do what was requisite. I was
anticipated; Madame Beck had put out her own hand: hers was steady
while mine trembled.

“Ca vaudra mieux,” said the doctor, turning from me to her.

He showed wisdom in his choice. Mine would have been feigned stoicism,
forced fortitude. Hers was neither forced nor feigned.

“Merci, Madame; très bien, fort bien!” said the operator when he had
finished. “Voilà un sang-froid bien opportun, et qui vaut mille élans
de sensibilité déplacée.”

He was pleased with her firmness, she with his compliment. It was
likely, too, that his whole general appearance, his voice, mien, and
manner, wrought impressions in his favour. Indeed, when you looked well
at him, and when a lamp was brought in—for it was evening and now
waxing dusk—you saw that, unless Madame Beck had been less than woman,
it could not well be otherwise. This young doctor (he was young) had
no common aspect. His stature looked imposingly tall in that little
chamber, and amidst that group of Dutch-made women; his profile was
clear, fine and expressive: perhaps his eye glanced from face to face
rather too vividly, too quickly, and too often; but it had a most
pleasant character, and so had his mouth; his chin was full, cleft,
Grecian, and perfect. As to his smile, one could not in a hurry make up
one’s mind as to the descriptive epithet it merited; there was
something in it that pleased, but something too that brought surging up
into the mind all one’s foibles and weak points: all that could lay one
open to a laugh. Yet Fifine liked this doubtful smile, and thought the
owner genial: much as he had hurt her, she held out her hand to bid him
a friendly good-night. He patted the little hand kindly, and then he
and Madame went down-stairs together; she talking in her highest tide
of spirits and volubility, he listening with an air of good-natured
amenity, dashed with that unconscious roguish archness I find it
difficult to describe.

I noticed that though he spoke French well, he spoke English better; he
had, too, an English complexion, eyes, and form. I noticed more. As he
passed me in leaving the room, turning his face in my direction one
moment—not to address me, but to speak to Madame, yet so standing, that
I almost necessarily looked up at him—a recollection which had been
struggling to form in my memory, since the first moment I heard his
voice, started up perfected. This was the very gentleman to whom I had
spoken at the bureau; who had helped me in the matter of the trunk; who
had been my guide through the dark, wet park. Listening, as he passed
down the long vestibule out into the street, I recognised his very
tread: it was the same firm and equal stride I had followed under the
dripping trees.

It was to be concluded that this young surgeon-physician’s first visit
to the Rue Fossette would be the last. The respectable Dr. Pillule
being expected home the next day, there appeared no reason why his
temporary substitute should again represent him; but the Fates had
written their decree to the contrary.

Dr. Pillule had been summoned to see a rich old hypochondriac at the
antique university town of Bouquin-Moisi, and upon his prescribing
change of air and travel as remedies, he was retained to accompany the
timid patient on a tour of some weeks; it but remained, therefore, for
the new doctor to continue his attendance at the Rue Fossette.

I often saw him when he came; for Madame would not trust the little
invalid to Trinette, but required me to spend much of my time in the
nursery. I think he was skilful. Fifine recovered rapidly under his
care, yet even her convalescence did not hasten his dismissal. Destiny
and Madame Beck seemed in league, and both had ruled that he should
make deliberate acquaintance with the vestibule, the private staircase
and upper chambers of the Rue Fossette.

No sooner did Fifine emerge from his hands than Désirée declared
herself ill. That possessed child had a genius for simulation, and
captivated by the attentions and indulgences of a sick-room, she came
to the conclusion that an illness would perfectly accommodate her
tastes, and took her bed accordingly. She acted well, and her mother
still better; for while the whole case was transparent to Madame Beck
as the day, she treated it with an astonishingly well-assured air of
gravity and good faith.

What surprised me was, that Dr. John (so the young Englishman had
taught Fifine to call him, and we all took from her the habit of
addressing him by this name, till it became an established custom, and
he was known by no other in the Rue Fossette)—that Dr. John consented
tacitly to adopt Madame’s tactics, and to fall in with her manœuvres.
He betrayed, indeed, a period of comic doubt, cast one or two rapid
glances from the child to the mother, indulged in an interval of
self-consultation, but finally resigned himself with a good grace to
play his part in the farce. Désirée eat like a raven, gambolled day and
night in her bed, pitched tents with the sheets and blankets, lounged
like a Turk amidst pillows and bolsters, diverted herself with throwing
her shoes at her bonne and grimacing at her sisters—over-flowed, in
short, with unmerited health and evil spirits; only languishing when
her mamma and the physician paid their diurnal visit. Madame Beck, I
knew, was glad, at any price, to have her daughter in bed out of the
way of mischief; but I wondered that Dr. John did not tire of the
business.

Every day, on this mere pretext of a motive, he gave punctual
attendance; Madame always received him with the same empressement, the
same sunshine for himself, the same admirably counterfeited air of
concern for her child. Dr. John wrote harmless prescriptions for the
patient, and viewed her mother with a shrewdly sparkling eye. Madame
caught his rallying looks without resenting them—she had too much good
sense for that. Supple as the young doctor seemed, one could not
despise him—this pliant part was evidently not adopted in the design to
curry favour with his employer: while he liked his office at the
pensionnat, and lingered strangely about the Rue Fossette, he was
independent, almost careless in his carriage there; and yet, too, he
was often thoughtful and preoccupied.

It was not perhaps my business to observe the mystery of his bearing,
or search out its origin or aim; but, placed as I was, I could hardly
help it. He laid himself open to my observation, according to my
presence in the room just that degree of notice and consequence a
person of my exterior habitually expects: that is to say, about what is
given to unobtrusive articles of furniture, chairs of ordinary joiner’s
work, and carpets of no striking pattern. Often, while waiting for
Madame, he would muse, smile, watch, or listen like a man who thinks
himself alone. I, meantime, was free to puzzle over his countenance and
movements, and wonder what could be the meaning of that peculiar
interest and attachment—all mixed up with doubt and strangeness, and
inexplicably ruled by some presiding spell—which wedded him to this
demi-convent, secluded in the built-up core of a capital. He, I
believe, never remembered that I had eyes in my head, much less a brain
behind them.

Nor would he ever have found this out, but that one day, while he sat
in the sunshine and I was observing the colouring of his hair,
whiskers, and complexion—the whole being of such a tone as a strong
light brings out with somewhat perilous force (indeed I recollect I was
driven to compare his beamy head in my thoughts to that of the “golden
image” which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up), an idea new, sudden,
and startling, riveted my attention with an over-mastering strength and
power of attraction. I know not to this day how I looked at him: the
force of surprise, and also of conviction, made me forget myself; and I
only recovered wonted consciousness when I saw that his notice was
arrested, and that it had caught my movement in a clear little oval
mirror fixed in the side of the window recess—by the aid of which
reflector Madame often secretly spied persons walking in the garden
below. Though of so gay and sanguine a temperament, he was not without
a certain nervous sensitiveness which made him ill at ease under a
direct, inquiring gaze. On surprising me thus, he turned and said, in a
tone which, though courteous, had just so much dryness in it as to mark
a shade of annoyance, as well as to give to what was said the character
of rebuke, “Mademoiselle does not spare me: I am not vain enough to
fancy that it is my merits which attract her attention; it must then be
some defect. Dare I ask—what?”

I was confounded, as the reader may suppose, yet not with an
irrecoverable confusion; being conscious that it was from no emotion of
incautious admiration, nor yet in a spirit of unjustifiable
inquisitiveness, that I had incurred this reproof. I might have cleared
myself on the spot, but would not. I did not speak. I was not in the
habit of speaking to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he chose
and accuse me of what he would, I resumed some work I had dropped, and
kept my head bent over it during the remainder of his stay. There is a
perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by
misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known,
we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest
man, on being casually taken for a housebreaker, does not feel rather
tickled than vexed at the mistake?