Villette

HE CASKET.

Behind the house at the Rue Fossette there was a garden—large,
considering that it lay in the heart of a city, and to my recollection
at this day it seems pleasant: but time, like distance, lends to
certain scenes an influence so softening; and where all is stone
around, blank wall and hot pavement, how precious seems one shrub, how
lovely an enclosed and planted spot of ground!

There went a tradition that Madame Beck’s house had in old days been a
convent. That in years gone by—how long gone by I cannot tell, but I
think some centuries—before the city had over-spread this quarter, and
when it was tilled ground and avenue, and such deep and leafy seclusion
as ought to embosom a religious house—that something had happened on
this site which, rousing fear and inflicting horror, had left to the
place the inheritance of a ghost-story. A vague tale went of a black
and white nun, sometimes, on some night or nights of the year, seen in
some part of this vicinage. The ghost must have been built out some
ages ago, for there were houses all round now; but certain
convent-relics, in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, yet
consecrated the spot; and, at the foot of one—a Methuselah of a
pear-tree, dead, all but a few boughs which still faithfully renewed
their perfumed snow in spring, and their honey-sweet pendants in
autumn—you saw, in scraping away the mossy earth between the half-bared
roots, a glimpse of slab, smooth, hard, and black. The legend went,
unconfirmed and unaccredited, but still propagated, that this was the
portal of a vault, imprisoning deep beneath that ground, on whose
surface grass grew and flowers bloomed, the bones of a girl whom a
monkish conclave of the drear middle ages had here buried alive for
some sin against her vow. Her shadow it was that tremblers had feared,
through long generations after her poor frame was dust; her black robe
and white veil that, for timid eyes, moonlight and shade had mocked, as
they fluctuated in the night-wind through the garden-thicket.

Independently of romantic rubbish, however, that old garden had its
charms. On summer mornings I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone;
on summer evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the rising
moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than
feel the freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the
gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful
about the roots of the doddered orchard giants. There was a large
berceau, above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a
smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all
along a high and grey wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of
beauty, and hung their clusters in loving profusion about the favoured
spot where jasmine and ivy met and married them.

Doubtless at high noon, in the broad, vulgar middle of the day, when
Madame Beck’s large school turned out rampant, and externes and
pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys’
college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and
limbs—doubtless then the garden was a trite, trodden-down place
enough. But at sunset or the hour of salut, when the externes were
gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it
then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear the bells of St. Jean
Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft, exalted sound.

I was walking thus one evening, and had been detained farther within
the verge of twilight than usual, by the still-deepening calm, the
mellow coolness, the fragrant breathing with which flowers no sunshine
could win now answered the persuasion of the dew. I saw by a light in
the oratory window that the Catholic household were then gathered to
evening prayer—a rite, from attendance on which, I now and then, as a
Protestant, exempted myself.

“One moment longer,” whispered solitude and the summer moon, “stay with
us: all is truly quiet now; for another quarter of an hour your
presence will not be missed: the day’s heat and bustle have tired you;
enjoy these precious minutes.”

The windowless backs of houses built in this garden, and in particular
the whole of one side, was skirted by the rear of a long line of
premises—being the boarding-houses of the neighbouring college. This
rear, however, was all blank stone, with the exception of certain attic
loopholes high up, opening from the sleeping-rooms of the
women-servants, and also one casement in a lower story said to mark the
chamber or study of a master. But, though thus secure, an alley, which
ran parallel with the very high wall on that side the garden, was
forbidden to be entered by the pupils. It was called indeed “l’allée
défendue,” and any girl setting foot there would have rendered herself
liable to as severe a penalty as the mild rules of Madame Beck’s
establishment permitted. Teachers might indeed go there with impunity;
but as the walk was narrow, and the neglected shrubs were grown very
thick and close on each side, weaving overhead a roof of branch and
leaf which the sun’s rays penetrated but in rare chequers, this alley
was seldom entered even during day, and after dusk was carefully
shunned.

From the first I was tempted to make an exception to this rule of
avoidance: the seclusion, the very gloom of the walk attracted me. For
a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by
degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such
shades of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature—shades, certainly
not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to
offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my
identity—by slow degrees I became a frequenter of this strait and
narrow path. I made myself gardener of some tintless flowers that grew
between its closely-ranked shrubs; I cleared away the relics of past
autumns, choking up a rustic seat at the far end. Borrowing of Goton,
the cuisinière, a pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, I made this seat
clean. Madame saw me at work and smiled approbation: whether sincerely
or not I don’t know; but she seemed sincere.

“Voyez-vous,” cried she, “comme elle est propre, cette demoiselle
Lucie? Vous aimez donc cette allée, meess?”

“Yes,” I said, “it is quiet and shady.”

“C’est juste,” cried she with an air of bonté; and she kindly
recommended me to confine myself to it as much as I chose, saying, that
as I was not charged with the surveillance, I need not trouble myself
to walk with the pupils: only I might permit her children to come
there, to talk English with me.

On the night in question, I was sitting on the hidden seat reclaimed
from fungi and mould, listening to what seemed the far-off sounds of
the city. Far off, in truth, they were not: this school was in the
city’s centre; hence, it was but five minutes’ walk to the park, scarce
ten to buildings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide streets
brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling
through them to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled
curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the
curtain round each couch, rang for the gay city about us the summons to
festal enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, however: gay
instincts my nature had few; ball or opera I had never seen; and though
often I had heard them described, and even wished to see them, it was
not the wish of one who hopes to partake a pleasure if she could only
reach it—who feels fitted to shine in some bright distant sphere, could
she but thither win her way; it was no yearning to attain, no hunger to
taste; only the calm desire to look on a new thing.

A moon was in the sky, not a full moon, but a young crescent. I saw her
through a space in the boughs overhead. She and the stars, visible
beside her, were no strangers where all else was strange: my childhood
knew them. I had seen that golden sign with the dark globe in its curve
leaning back on azure, beside an old thorn at the top of an old field,
in Old England, in long past days, just as it now leaned back beside a
stately spire in this continental capital.

Oh, my childhood! I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I
spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I could feel.
About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future—such a
future as mine—to be dead. And in catalepsy and a dead trance, I
studiously held the quick of my nature.

At that time, I well remember whatever could excite—certain accidents
of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they
woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I
could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane
shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their
saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was
roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and
creeping outside the casement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with
my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was
wild, it was pitch-dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the
night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too
resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and
full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to
man—too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced
by white and blinding bolts.

I did long, achingly, then and for four and twenty hours afterwards,
for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me
upwards and onwards. This longing, and all of a similar kind, it was
necessary to knock on the head; which I did, figuratively, after the
manner of Jael to Sisera, driving a nail through their temples. Unlike
Sisera, they did not die: they were but transiently stunned, and at
intervals would turn on the nail with a rebellious wrench: then did the
temples bleed, and the brain thrill to its core.

To-night, I was not so mutinous, nor so miserable. My Sisera lay quiet
in the tent, slumbering; and if his pain ached through his slumbers,
something like an angel—the ideal—knelt near, dropping balm on the
soothed temples, holding before the sealed eyes a magic glass, of which
the sweet, solemn visions were repeated in dreams, and shedding a
reflex from her moonlight wings and robe over the transfixed sleeper,
over the tent threshold, over all the landscape lying without. Jael,
the stern woman; sat apart, relenting somewhat over her captive; but
more prone to dwell on the faithful expectation of Heber coming home.
By which words I mean that the cool peace and dewy sweetness of the
night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point,
but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.

Should not such a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been
the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude
Real burst coarsely in—all evil grovelling and repellent as she too
often is.

Amid the intense stillness of that pile of stone overlooking the walk,
the trees, the high wall, I heard a sound; a casement [all the windows
here are casements, opening on hinges] creaked. Ere I had time to look
up and mark where, in which story, or by whom unclosed, a tree overhead
shook, as if struck by a missile; some object dropped prone at my feet.

Nine was striking by St. Jean Baptiste’s clock; day was fading, but it
was not dark: the crescent moon aided little, but the deep gilding of
that point in heaven where the sun beamed last, and the crystalline
clearness of a wide space above, sustained the summer twilight; even in
my dark walk I could, by approaching an opening, have managed to read
print of a small type. Easy was it to see then that the missile was a
box, a small box of white and coloured ivory; its loose lid opened in
my hand; violets lay within, violets smothering a closely folded bit of
pink paper, a note, superscribed, “Pour la robe grise.” I wore indeed a
dress of French grey.

Good. Was this a billet-doux? A thing I had heard of, but hitherto had
not had the honour of seeing or handling. Was it this sort of commodity
I held between my finger and thumb at this moment?

Scarcely: I did not dream it for a moment. Suitor or admirer my very
thoughts had not conceived. All the teachers had dreams of some lover;
one (but she was naturally of a credulous turn) believed in a future
husband. All the pupils above fourteen knew of some prospective
bridegroom; two or three were already affianced by their parents, and
had been so from childhood: but into the realm of feelings and hopes
which such prospects open, my speculations, far less my presumptions,
had never once had warrant to intrude. If the other teachers went into
town, or took a walk on the boulevards, or only attended mass, they
were very certain (according to the accounts brought back) to meet with
some individual of the “opposite sex,” whose rapt, earnest gaze assured
them of their power to strike and to attract. I can’t say that my
experience tallied with theirs, in this respect. I went to church and I
took walks, and am very well convinced that nobody minded me. There was
not a girl or woman in the Rue Fossette who could not, and did not
testify to having received an admiring beam from our young doctor’s
blue eyes at one time or other. I am obliged, however humbling it may
sound, to except myself: as far as I was concerned, those blue eyes
were guiltless, and calm as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin.
So it came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered often at
their gaiety, security, and self-satisfaction, but did not trouble
myself to look up and gaze along the path they seemed so certain of
treading. This then was no billet-doux; and it was in settled
conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it. Thus it ran—I
translate:—

“Angel of my dreams! A thousand, thousand thanks for the promise kept:
scarcely did I venture to hope its fulfilment. I believed you, indeed,
to be half in jest; and then you seemed to think the enterprise beset
with such danger—the hour so untimely, the alley so strictly
secluded—often, you said, haunted by that dragon, the English
teacher—une véritable bégueule Britannique à ce que vous dites—espèce
de monstre, brusque et rude comme un vieux caporal de grenadiers, et
revêche comme une religieuse” (the reader will excuse my modesty in
allowing this flattering sketch of my amiable self to retain the slight
veil of the original tongue). “You are aware,” went on this precious
effusion, “that little Gustave, on account of his illness, has been
removed to a master’s chamber—that favoured chamber, whose lattice
overlooks your prison-ground. There, I, the best uncle in the world, am
admitted to visit him. How tremblingly I approached the window and
glanced into your Eden—an Eden for me, though a desert for you!—how I
feared to behold vacancy, or the dragon aforesaid! How my heart
palpitated with delight when, through apertures in the envious boughs,
I at once caught the gleam of your graceful straw-hat, and the waving
of your grey dress—dress that I should recognise amongst a thousand.
But why, my angel, will you not look up? Cruel, to deny me one ray of
those adorable eyes!—how a single glance would have revived me! I write
this in fiery haste; while the physician examines Gustave, I snatch an
opportunity to enclose it in a small casket, together with a bouquet of
flowers, the sweetest that blow—yet less sweet than thee, my Peri—my
all-charming! ever thine-thou well knowest whom!”

“I wish I did know whom,” was my comment; and the wish bore even closer
reference to the person addressed in this choice document, than to the
writer thereof. Perhaps it was from the fiancé of one of the engaged
pupils; and, in that case, there was no great harm done or
intended—only a small irregularity. Several of the girls, the majority,
indeed, had brothers or cousins at the neighbouring college. But “la
robe grise, le chapeau de paille,” here surely was a clue—a very
confusing one. The straw-hat was an ordinary garden head-screen, common
to a score besides myself. The grey dress hardly gave more definite
indication. Madame Beck herself ordinarily wore a grey dress just now;
another teacher, and three of the pensionnaires, had had grey dresses
purchased of the same shade and fabric as mine: it was a sort of
every-day wear which happened at that time to be in vogue.

Meanwhile, as I pondered, I knew I must go in. Lights, moving in the
dormitory, announced that prayers were over, and the pupils going to
bed. Another half-hour and all doors would be locked—all lights
extinguished. The front door yet stood open, to admit into the heated
house the coolness of the summer night; from the portress’s cabinet
close by shone a lamp, showing the long vestibule with the two-leaved
drawing-room doors on one side, the great street-door closing the
vista.

All at once, quick rang the bell—quick, but not loud—a cautious
tinkle—a sort of warning metal whisper. Rosine darted from her cabinet
and ran to open. The person she admitted stood with her two minutes in
parley: there seemed a demur, a delay. Rosine came to the garden door,
lamp in hand; she stood on the steps, lifting her lamp, looking round
vaguely.

“Quel conte!” she cried, with a coquettish laugh. “Personne n’y a été.”

“Let me pass,” pleaded a voice I knew: “I ask but five minutes;” and a
familiar shape, tall and grand (as we of the Rue Fossette all thought
it), issued from the house, and strode down amongst the beds and walks.
It was sacrilege—the intrusion of a man into that spot, at that hour;
but he knew himself privileged, and perhaps he trusted to the friendly
night. He wandered down the alleys, looking on this side and on that—he
was lost in the shrubs, trampling flowers and breaking branches in his
search—he penetrated at last the “forbidden walk.” There I met him,
like some ghost, I suppose.

“Dr. John! it is found.”

He did not ask by whom, for with his quick eye he perceived that I held
it in my hand.

“Do not betray her,” he said, looking at me as if I were indeed a
dragon.

“Were I ever so disposed to treachery, I cannot betray what I do not
know,” was my answer. “Read the note, and you will see how little it
reveals.”

“Perhaps you have read it,” I thought to myself; and yet I could not
believe he wrote it: that could hardly be his style: besides, I was
fool enough to think there would be a degree of hardship in his calling
me such names. His own look vindicated him; he grew hot, and coloured
as he read.

“This is indeed too much: this is cruel, this is humiliating,” were the
words that fell from him.

I thought it was cruel, when I saw his countenance so moved. No
matter whether he was to blame or not; somebody, it seemed to me, must
be more to blame.

“What shall you do about it?” he inquired of me. “Shall you tell Madame
Beck what you have found, and cause a stir—an esclandre?”

I thought I ought to tell, and said so; adding that I did not believe
there would be either stir or esclandre: Madame was much too prudent to
make a noise about an affair of that sort connected with her
establishment.

He stood looking down and meditating. He was both too proud and too
honourable to entreat my secresy on a point which duty evidently
commanded me to communicate. I wished to do right, yet loathed to
grieve or injure him. Just then Rosine glanced out through the open
door; she could not see us, though between the trees I could plainly
see her: her dress was grey, like mine. This circumstance, taken in
connection with prior transactions, suggested to me that perhaps the
case, however deplorable, was one in which I was under no obligation
whatever to concern myself. Accordingly, I said,—“If you can assure me
that none of Madame Beck’s pupils are implicated in this business, I
shall be very happy to stand aloof from all interference. Take the
casket, the bouquet, and the billet; for my part, I gladly forget the
whole affair.”

“Look there!” he whispered suddenly, as his hand closed on what I
offered, and at the same time he pointed through the boughs.

I looked. Behold Madame, in shawl, wrapping-gown, and slippers, softly
descending the steps, and stealing like a cat round the garden: in two
minutes she would have been upon Dr. John. If she were like a cat,
however, he, quite as much, resembled a leopard: nothing could be
lighter than his tread when he chose. He watched, and as she turned a
corner, he took the garden at two noiseless bounds. She reappeared, and
he was gone. Rosine helped him, instantly interposing the door between
him and his huntress. I, too, might have got away, but I preferred to
meet Madame openly.

Though it was my frequent and well-known custom to spend twilight in
the garden, yet, never till now, had I remained so late. Full sure was
I that Madame had missed—was come in search of me, and designed now to
pounce on the defaulter unawares. I expected a reprimand. No. Madame
was all goodness. She tendered not even a remonstrance; she testified
no shade of surprise. With that consummate tact of hers, in which I
believe she was never surpassed by living thing, she even professed
merely to have issued forth to taste “la brise du soir.”

“Quelle belle nuit!” cried she, looking up at the stars—the moon was
now gone down behind the broad tower of Jean Baptiste. “Qu’il fait bon?
que l’air est frais!”

And, instead of sending me in, she detained me to take a few turns with
her down the principal alley. When at last we both re-entered, she
leaned affably on my shoulder by way of support in mounting the
front-door steps; at parting, her cheek was presented to my lips, and
“Bon soir, my bonne amie; dormez bien!” was her kindly adieu for the
night.

I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and thoughtful on my
couch—smiling at Madame. The unction, the suavity of her behaviour
offered, for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind
was busy in her brain. From some aperture or summit of observation,
through parted bough or open window, she had doubtless caught a
glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, of that night’s
transactions. Finely accomplished as she was in the art of
surveillance, it was next to impossible that a casket could be thrown
into her garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to seek it,
without that she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall,
or stilly murmur (and though Dr. John had spoken very low in the few
words he dropped me, yet the hum of his man’s voice pervaded, I
thought, the whole conventual ground)—without, I say, that she should
have caught intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on her
premises. What things, she might by no means see, or at that time be
able to discover; but a delicious little ravelled plot lay tempting her
to disentanglement; and in the midst, folded round and round in
cobwebs, had she not secured “Meess Lucie” clumsily involved, like the
foolish fly she was?