Villette

HE PORTRESS’S CABINET.

It was summer and very hot. Georgette, the youngest of Madame Beck’s
children, took a fever. Désirée, suddenly cured of her ailments, was,
together with Fifine, packed off to Bonne-Maman, in the country, by way
of precaution against infection. Medical aid was now really needed, and
Madame, choosing to ignore the return of Dr. Pillule, who had been at
home a week, conjured his English rival to continue his visits. One or
two of the pensionnaires complained of headache, and in other respects
seemed slightly to participate in Georgette’s ailment. “Now, at last,”
I thought, “Dr. Pillule must be recalled: the prudent directress will
never venture to permit the attendance of so young a man on the
pupils.”

The directress was very prudent, but she could also be intrepidly
venturous. She actually introduced Dr. John to the school-division of
the premises, and established him in attendance on the proud and
handsome Blanche de Melcy, and the vain, flirting Angélique, her
friend. Dr. John, I thought, testified a certain gratification at this
mark of confidence; and if discretion of bearing could have justified
the step, it would by him have been amply justified. Here, however, in
this land of convents and confessionals, such a presence as his was not
to be suffered with impunity in a “pensionnat de demoiselles.” The
school gossiped, the kitchen whispered, the town caught the rumour,
parents wrote letters and paid visits of remonstrance. Madame, had she
been weak, would now have been lost: a dozen rival educational houses
were ready to improve this false step—if false step it were—to her
ruin; but Madame was not weak, and little Jesuit though she might be,
yet I clapped the hands of my heart, and with its voice cried “brava!”
as I watched her able bearing, her skilled management, her temper and
her firmness on this occasion.

She met the alarmed parents with a good-humoured, easy grace for nobody
matched her in, I know not whether to say the possession or the
assumption of a certain “rondeur et franchise de bonne femme;” which on
various occasions gained the point aimed at with instant and complete
success, where severe gravity and serious reasoning would probably have
failed.

“Ce pauvre Docteur Jean!” she would say, chuckling and rubbing joyously
her fat little white hands; “ce cher jeune homme! le meilleur créature
du monde!” and go on to explain how she happened to be employing him
for her own children, who were so fond of him they would scream
themselves into fits at the thought of another doctor; how, where she
had confidence for her own, she thought it natural to repose trust for
others, and au reste, it was only the most temporary expedient in the
world; Blanche and Angélique had the migraine; Dr. John had written a
prescription; voilà tout!

The parents’ mouths were closed. Blanche and Angélique saved her all
remaining trouble by chanting loud duets in their physician’s praise;
the other pupils echoed them, unanimously declaring that when they were
ill they would have Dr. John and nobody else; and Madame laughed, and
the parents laughed too. The Labassecouriens must have a large organ of
philoprogenitiveness: at least the indulgence of offspring is carried
by them to excessive lengths; the law of most households being the
children’s will. Madame now got credit for having acted on this
occasion in a spirit of motherly partiality: she came off with flying
colours; people liked her as a directress better than ever.

To this day I never fully understood why she thus risked her interest
for the sake of Dr. John. What people said, of course I know well: the
whole house—pupils, teachers, servants included—affirmed that she was
going to marry him. So they had settled it; difference of age seemed to
make no obstacle in their eyes: it was to be so.

It must be admitted that appearances did not wholly discountenance this
idea; Madame seemed so bent on retaining his services, so oblivious of
her former protégé, Pillule. She made, too, such a point of personally
receiving his visits, and was so unfailingly cheerful, blithe, and
benignant in her manner to him. Moreover, she paid, about this time,
marked attention to dress: the morning dishabille, the nightcap and
shawl, were discarded; Dr. John’s early visits always found her with
auburn braids all nicely arranged, silk dress trimly fitted on, neat
laced brodequins in lieu of slippers: in short the whole toilette
complete as a model, and fresh as a flower. I scarcely think, however,
that her intention in this went further than just to show a very
handsome man that she was not quite a plain woman; and plain she was
not. Without beauty of feature or elegance of form, she pleased.
Without youth and its gay graces, she cheered. One never tired of
seeing her: she was never monotonous, or insipid, or colourless, or
flat. Her unfaded hair, her eye with its temperate blue light, her
cheek with its wholesome fruit-like bloom—these things pleased in
moderation, but with constancy.

Had she, indeed, floating visions of adopting Dr. John as a husband,
taking him to her well-furnished home, endowing him with her savings,
which were said to amount to a moderate competency, and making him
comfortable for the rest of his life? Did Dr. John suspect her of such
visions? I have met him coming out of her presence with a mischievous
half-smile about his lips, and in his eyes a look as of masculine
vanity elate and tickled. With all his good looks and good-nature, he
was not perfect; he must have been very imperfect if he roguishly
encouraged aims he never intended to be successful. But did he not
intend them to be successful? People said he had no money, that he was
wholly dependent upon his profession. Madame—though perhaps some
fourteen years his senior—was yet the sort of woman never to grow old,
never to wither, never to break down. They certainly were on good
terms. He perhaps was not in love; but how many people ever do
love, or at least marry for love, in this world. We waited the end.

For what he waited, I do not know, nor for what he watched; but the
peculiarity of his manner, his expectant, vigilant, absorbed, eager
look, never wore off: it rather intensified. He had never been quite
within the compass of my penetration, and I think he ranged farther and
farther beyond it.

One morning little Georgette had been more feverish and consequently
more peevish; she was crying, and would not be pacified. I thought a
particular draught ordered, disagreed with her, and I doubted whether
it ought to be continued; I waited impatiently for the doctor’s coming
in order to consult him.

The door-bell rang, he was admitted; I felt sure of this, for I heard
his voice addressing the portress. It was his custom to mount straight
to the nursery, taking about three degrees of the staircase at once,
and coming upon us like a cheerful surprise. Five minutes
elapsed—ten—and I saw and heard nothing of him. What could he be doing?
Possibly waiting in the corridor below. Little Georgette still piped
her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her familiar term, “Minnie,
Minnie, me very poorly!” till my heart ached. I descended to ascertain
why he did not come. The corridor was empty. Whither was he vanished?
Was he with Madame in the salle-à-manger? Impossible: I had left her
but a short time since, dressing in her own chamber. I listened. Three
pupils were just then hard at work practising in three proximate
rooms—the dining-room and the greater and lesser drawing-rooms, between
which and the corridor there was but the portress’s cabinet
communicating with the salons, and intended originally for a boudoir.
Farther off, at a fourth instrument in the oratory, a whole class of a
dozen or more were taking a singing lesson, and just then joining in a
“barcarole” (I think they called it), whereof I yet remember these
words “fraîchë,” “brisë,” and “Venisë.” Under these circumstances, what
could I hear? A great deal, certainly; had it only been to the purpose.

Yes; I heard a giddy treble laugh in the above-mentioned little
cabinet, close by the door of which I stood—that door half-unclosed; a
man’s voice in a soft, deep, pleading tone, uttered some words,
whereof I only caught the adjuration, “For God’s sake!” Then, after a
second’s pause, forth issued Dr. John, his eye full shining, but not
with either joy or triumph; his fair English cheek high-coloured; a
baffled, tortured, anxious, and yet a tender meaning on his brow.

The open door served me as a screen; but had I been full in his way, I
believe he would have passed without seeing me. Some mortification,
some strong vexation had hold of his soul: or rather, to write my
impressions now as I received them at the time I should say some
sorrow, some sense of injustice. I did not so much think his pride was
hurt, as that his affections had been wounded—cruelly wounded, it
seemed to me. But who was the torturer? What being in that house had
him so much in her power? Madame I believed to be in her chamber; the
room whence he had stepped was dedicated to the portress’s sole use;
and she, Rosine Matou, an unprincipled though pretty little French
grisette, airy, fickle, dressy, vain, and mercenary—it was not, surely,
to her hand he owed the ordeal through which he seemed to have
passed?

But while I pondered, her voice, clear, though somewhat sharp, broke
out in a lightsome French song, trilling through the door still ajar: I
glanced in, doubting my senses. There at the table she sat in a smart
dress of “jaconas rose,” trimming a tiny blond cap: not a living thing
save herself was in the room, except indeed some gold fish in a glass
globe, some flowers in pots, and a broad July sunbeam.

Here was a problem: but I must go up-stairs to ask about the medicine.

Dr. John sat in a chair at Georgette’s bedside; Madame stood before
him; the little patient had been examined and soothed, and now lay
composed in her crib. Madame Beck, as I entered, was discussing the
physician’s own health, remarking on some real or fancied change in his
looks, charging him with over-work, and recommending rest and change of
air. He listened good-naturedly, but with laughing indifference,
telling her that she was “trop bonne,” and that he felt perfectly well.
Madame appealed to me—Dr. John following her movement with a slow
glance which seemed to express languid surprise at reference being made
to a quarter so insignificant.

“What do you think, Miss Lucie?” asked Madame. “Is he not paler and
thinner?”

It was very seldom that I uttered more than monosyllables in Dr. John’s
presence; he was the kind of person with whom I was likely ever to
remain the neutral, passive thing he thought me. Now, however, I took
licence to answer in a phrase: and a phrase I purposely made quite
significant.

“He looks ill at this moment; but perhaps it is owing to some temporary
cause: Dr. John may have been vexed or harassed.” I cannot tell how he
took this speech, as I never sought his face for information. Georgette
here began to ask me in her broken English if she might have a glass of
eau sucrée. I answered her in English. For the first time, I fancy,
he noticed that I spoke his language; hitherto he had always taken me
for a foreigner, addressing me as “Mademoiselle,” and giving in French
the requisite directions about the children’s treatment. He seemed on
the point of making a remark; but thinking better of it, held his
tongue.

Madame recommenced advising him; he shook his head, laughing, rose and
bid her good-morning, with courtesy, but still with the regardless air
of one whom too much unsolicited attention was surfeiting and spoiling.

When he was gone, Madame dropped into the chair he had just left; she
rested her chin in her hand; all that was animated and amiable vanished
from her face: she looked stony and stern, almost mortified and morose.
She sighed; a single, but a deep sigh. A loud bell rang for
morning-school. She got up; as she passed a dressing-table with a glass
upon it, she looked at her reflected image. One single white hair
streaked her nut-brown tresses; she plucked it out with a shudder. In
the full summer daylight, her face, though it still had the colour,
could plainly be seen to have lost the texture of youth; and then,
where were youth’s contours? Ah, Madame! wise as you were, even you
knew weakness. Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened
towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come
upon her. That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly
“All-hail,” and her soul rejected the intimacy.

But Rosine! My bewilderment there surpasses description. I embraced
five opportunities of passing her cabinet that day, with a view to
contemplating her charms, and finding out the secret of their
influence. She was pretty, young, and wore a well-made dress. All very
good points, and, I suppose, amply sufficient to account, in any
philosophic mind, for any amount of agony and distraction in a young
man, like Dr. John. Still, I could not help forming half a wish that
the said doctor were my brother; or at least that he had a sister or a
mother who would kindly sermonize him. I say half a wish; I broke it,
and flung it away before it became a whole one, discovering in good
time its exquisite folly. “Somebody,” I argued, “might as well
sermonize Madame about her young physician: and what good would that
do?”

I believe Madame sermonized herself. She did not behave weakly, or make
herself in any shape ridiculous. It is true she had neither strong
feelings to overcome, nor tender feelings by which to be miserably
pained. It is true likewise that she had an important avocation, a real
business to fill her time, divert her thoughts, and divide her
interest. It is especially true that she possessed a genuine good sense
which is not given to all women nor to all men; and by dint of these
combined advantages she behaved wisely—she behaved well. Brava! once
more, Madame Beck. I saw you matched against an Apollyon of a
predilection; you fought a good fight, and you overcame!