Villette

HE WATCHGUARD.

M. Paul Emanuel owned an acute sensitiveness to the annoyance of
interruption, from whatsoever cause occurring, during his lessons: to
pass through the classe under such circumstances was considered by the
teachers and pupils of the school, individually and collectively, to be
as much as a woman’s or girl’s life was worth.

Madame Beck herself, if forced to the enterprise, would “skurry”
through, retrenching her skirts, and carefully coasting the formidable
estrade, like a ship dreading breakers. As to Rosine, the portress—on
whom, every half-hour, devolved the fearful duty of fetching pupils out
of the very heart of one or other of the divisions to take their
music-lessons in the oratory, the great or little saloon, the
salle-à-manger, or some other piano-station—she would, upon her second
or third attempt, frequently become almost tongue-tied from excess of
consternation—a sentiment inspired by the unspeakable looks levelled at
her through a pair of dart-dealing spectacles.

One morning I was sitting in the carré, at work upon a piece of
embroidery which one of the pupils had commenced but delayed to finish,
and while my fingers wrought at the frame, my ears regaled themselves
with listening to the crescendos and cadences of a voice haranguing in
the neighbouring classe, in tones that waxed momentarily more unquiet,
more ominously varied. There was a good strong partition-wall between
me and the gathering storm, as well as a facile means of flight through
the glass-door to the court, in case it swept this way; so I am afraid
I derived more amusement than alarm from these thickening symptoms.
Poor Rosine was not safe: four times that blessed morning had she made
the passage of peril; and now, for the fifth time, it became her
dangerous duty to snatch, as it were, a brand from the burning—a pupil
from under M. Paul’s nose.

“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” cried she. “Que vais-je devenir? Monsieur va me
tuer, je suis sûre; car il est d’une colère!”

Nerved by the courage of desperation, she opened the door.

“Mademoiselle La Malle au piano!” was her cry.

Ere she could make good her retreat, or quite close the door, this
voice uttered itself:—

“Dès ce moment!—la classe est défendue. La première qui ouvrira cette
porte, ou passera par cette division, sera pendue—fut-ce Madame Beck
elle-même!”

Ten minutes had not succeeded the promulgation of this decree when
Rosine’s French pantoufles were again heard shuffling along the
corridor.

“Mademoiselle,” said she, “I would not for a five-franc piece go into
that classe again just now: Monsieur’s lunettes are really terrible;
and here is a commissionaire come with a message from the Athénée. I
have told Madame Beck I dare not deliver it, and she says I am to
charge you with it.”

“Me? No, that is rather too bad! It is not in my line of duty. Come,
come, Rosine! bear your own burden. Be brave—charge once more!”

“I, Mademoiselle?—impossible! Five times I have crossed him this day.
Madame must really hire a gendarme for this service. Ouf! Je n’en puis
plus!”

“Bah! you are only a coward. What is the message?”

“Precisely of the kind with which Monsieur least likes to be pestered:
an urgent summons to go directly to the Athénée, as there is an
official visitor—inspector—I know not what—arrived, and Monsieur must
meet him: you know how he hates a must.”

Yes, I knew well enough. The restive little man detested spur or curb:
against whatever was urgent or obligatory, he was sure to revolt.
However, I accepted the responsibility—not, certainly, without fear,
but fear blent with other sentiments, curiosity, amongst them. I opened
the door, I entered, I closed it behind me as quickly and quietly as a
rather unsteady hand would permit; for to be slow or bustling, to
rattle a latch, or leave a door gaping wide, were aggravations of crime
often more disastrous in result than the main crime itself. There I
stood then, and there he sat; his humour was visibly bad—almost at its
worst; he had been giving a lesson in arithmetic—for he gave lessons on
any and every subject that struck his fancy—and arithmetic being a dry
subject, invariably disagreed with him: not a pupil but trembled when
he spoke of figures. He sat, bent above his desk: to look up at the
sound of an entrance, at the occurrence of a direct breach of his will
and law, was an effort he could not for the moment bring himself to
make. It was quite as well: I thus gained time to walk up the long
classe; and it suited my idiosyncracy far better to encounter the near
burst of anger like his, than to bear its menace at a distance.

At his estrade I paused, just in front; of course I was not worthy of
immediate attention: he proceeded with his lesson. Disdain would not
do: he must hear and he must answer my message.

Not being quite tall enough to lift my head over his desk, elevated
upon the estrade, and thus suffering eclipse in my present position, I
ventured to peep round, with the design, at first, of merely getting a
better view of his face, which had struck me when I entered as bearing
a close and picturesque resemblance to that of a black and sallow
tiger. Twice did I enjoy this side-view with impunity, advancing and
receding unseen; the third time my eye had scarce dawned beyond the
obscuration of the desk, when it was caught and transfixed through its
very pupil—transfixed by the “lunettes.” Rosine was right; these
utensils had in them a blank and immutable terror, beyond the mobile
wrath of the wearer’s own unglazed eyes.

I now found the advantage of proximity: these short-sighted “lunettes”
were useless for the inspection of a criminal under Monsieur’s nose;
accordingly, he doffed them, and he and I stood on more equal terms.

I am glad I was not really much afraid of him—that, indeed, close in
his presence, I felt no terror at all; for upon his demanding cord and
gibbet to execute the sentence recently pronounced, I was able to
furnish him with a needleful of embroidering thread with such
accommodating civility as could not but allay some portion at least of
his surplus irritation. Of course I did not parade this courtesy before
public view: I merely handed the thread round the angle of the desk,
and attached it, ready noosed, to the barred back of the Professor’s
chair.

“Que me voulez-vous?” said he in a growl of which the music was wholly
confined to his chest and throat, for he kept his teeth clenched; and
seemed registering to himself an inward vow that nothing earthly should
wring from him a smile.

My answer commenced uncompromisingly: “Monsieur,” I said, “je veux
l’impossible, des choses inouïes;” and thinking it best not to mince
matters, but to administer the “douche” with decision, in a low but
quick voice, I delivered the Athenian message, floridly exaggerating
its urgency.

Of course, he would not hear a word of it. “He would not go; he would
not leave his present class, let all the officials of Villette send for
him. He would not put himself an inch out of his way at the bidding of
king, cabinet, and chambers together.”

I knew, however, that he must go; that, talk as he would, both his
duty and interest commanded an immediate and literal compliance with
the summons: I stood, therefore, waiting in silence, as if he had not
yet spoken. He asked what more I wanted.

“Only Monsieur’s answer to deliver to the commissionaire.”

He waved an impatient negative.

I ventured to stretch my hand to the bonnet-grec which lay in grim
repose on the window-sill. He followed this daring movement with his
eye, no doubt in mixed pity and amazement at its presumption.

“Ah!” he muttered, “if it came to that—if Miss Lucy meddled with his
bonnet-grec—she might just put it on herself, turn garçon for the
occasion, and benevolently go to the Athénée in his stead.”

With great respect, I laid the bonnet on the desk, where its tassel
seemed to give me an awful nod.

“I’ll write a note of apology—that will do!” said he, still bent on
evasion.

Knowing well it would not do, I gently pushed the bonnet towards his
hand. Thus impelled, it slid down the polished slope of the varnished
and unbaized desk, carried before it the light steel-framed “lunettes,”
and, fearful to relate, they fell to the estrade. A score of times ere
now had I seen them fall and receive no damage—this time, as Lucy
Snowe’s hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble
became a shivered and shapeless star.

Now, indeed, dismay seized me—dismay and regret. I knew the value of
these “lunettes”: M. Paul’s sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and
these glasses suited him. I had heard him call them his treasures: as I
picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened
through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think
I was even more sorry than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look
the bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak.

“Là!” said he: “me voilà veuf de mes lunettes! I think Mademoiselle
Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply earned; she
trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, traitress! traitress! You are
resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your hands!”

I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering, and
furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had
seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crécy. He was not
angry—not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of
clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint. This event,
which seemed so untoward—which I thought had ruined at once my chance
of successful persuasion—proved my best help. Difficult of management
so long as I had done him no harm, he became graciously pliant as soon
as I stood in his presence a conscious and contrite offender.

Still gently railing at me as “une forte femme—une Anglaise
terrible—une petite casse-tout”—he declared that he dared not but obey
one who had given such an instance of her dangerous prowess; it was
absolutely like the “grand Empereur smashing the vase to inspire
dismay.” So, at last, crowning himself with his bonnet-grec, and taking
his ruined “lunettes” from my hand with a clasp of kind pardon and
encouragement, he made his bow, and went off to the Athénée in
first-rate humour and spirits.

After all this amiability, the reader will be sorry for my sake to hear
that I was quarrelling with M. Paul again before night; yet so it was,
and I could not help it.

It was his occasional custom—and a very laudable, acceptable custom,
too—to arrive of an evening, always à l’improviste, unannounced, burst
in on the silent hour of study, establish a sudden despotism over us
and our occupations, cause books to be put away, work-bags to be
brought out, and, drawing forth a single thick volume, or a handful of
pamphlets, substitute for the besotted “lecture pieuse,” drawled by a
sleepy pupil, some tragedy made grand by grand reading, ardent by fiery
action—some drama, whereof, for my part, I rarely studied the intrinsic
merit; for M. Emanuel made it a vessel for an outpouring, and filled it
with his native verve and passion like a cup with a vital brewage. Or
else he would flash through our conventual darkness a reflex of a
brighter world, show us a glimpse of the current literature of the day,
read us passages from some enchanting tale, or the last witty
feuilleton which had awakened laughter in the saloons of Paris; taking
care always to expunge, with the severest hand, whether from tragedy,
melodrama, tale, or essay, whatever passage, phrase, or word, could be
deemed unsuited to an audience of “jeunes filles.” I noticed more than
once, that where retrenchment without substitute would have left
unmeaning vacancy, or introduced weakness, he could, and did, improvise
whole paragraphs, no less vigorous than irreproachable; the
dialogue—the description—he engrafted was often far better than that he
pruned away.

Well, on the evening in question, we were sitting silent as nuns in a
“retreat,” the pupils studying, the teachers working. I remember my
work; it was a slight matter of fancy, and it rather interested me; it
had a purpose; I was not doing it merely to kill time; I meant it when
finished as a gift; and the occasion of presentation being near, haste
was requisite, and my fingers were busy.

We heard the sharp bell-peal which we all knew; then the rapid step
familiar to each ear: the words “Voilà Monsieur!” had scarcely broken
simultaneously from every lip, when the two-leaved door split (as split
it always did for his admission—such a slow word as “open” is
inefficient to describe his movements), and he stood in the midst of
us.

There were two study tables, both long and flanked with benches; over
the centre of each hung a lamp; beneath this lamp, on either side the
table, sat a teacher; the girls were arranged to the right hand and the
left; the eldest and most studious nearest the lamps or tropics; the
idlers and little ones towards the north and south poles. Monsieur’s
habit was politely to hand a chair to some teacher, generally Zélie St.
Pierre, the senior mistress; then to take her vacated seat; and thus
avail himself of the full beam of Cancer or Capricorn, which, owing to
his near sight, he needed.

As usual, Zélie rose with alacrity, smiling to the whole extent of her
mouth, and the full display of her upper and under rows of teeth—that
strange smile which passes from ear to ear, and is marked only by a
sharp thin curve, which fails to spread over the countenance, and
neither dimples the cheek nor lights the eye. I suppose Monsieur did
not see her, or he had taken a whim that he would not notice her, for
he was as capricious as women are said to be; then his “lunettes” (he
had got another pair) served him as an excuse for all sorts of little
oversights and shortcomings. Whatever might be his reason, he passed by
Zélie, came to the other side of the table, and before I could start up
to clear the way, whispered, “Ne bougez pas,” and established himself
between me and Miss Fanshawe, who always would be my neighbour, and
have her elbow in my side, however often I declared to her, “Ginevra, I
wish you were at Jericho.”

It was easy to say, “Ne bougez pas;” but how could I help it? I must
make him room, and I must request the pupils to recede that I might
recede. It was very well for Ginevra to be gummed to me, “keeping
herself warm,” as she said, on the winter evenings, and harassing my
very heart with her fidgetings and pokings, obliging me, indeed,
sometimes to put an artful pin in my girdle by way of protection
against her elbow; but I suppose M. Emanuel was not to be subjected to
the same kind of treatment, so I swept away my working materials, to
clear space for his book, and withdrew myself to make room for his
person; not, however, leaving more than a yard of interval, just what
any reasonable man would have regarded as a convenient, respectful
allowance of bench. But M. Emanuel never was reasonable; flint and
tinder that he was! he struck and took fire directly.

“Vous ne voulez pas de moi pour voisin,” he growled: “vous vous donnez
des airs de caste; vous me traitez en paria;” he scowled. “Soit! je
vais arranger la chose!” And he set to work.

“Levez vous toutes, Mesdemoiselles!” cried he.

The girls rose. He made them all file off to the other table. He then
placed me at one extremity of the long bench, and having duly and
carefully brought me my work-basket, silk, scissors, all my implements,
he fixed himself quite at the other end.

At this arrangement, highly absurd as it was, not a soul in the room
dared to laugh; luckless for the giggler would have been the giggle. As
for me, I took it with entire coolness. There I sat, isolated and cut
off from human intercourse; I sat and minded my work, and was quiet,
and not at all unhappy.

“Est ce assez de distance?” he demanded.

“Monsieur en est l’arbitre,” said I.

“Vous savez bien que non. C’est vous qui avez crée ce vide immense: moi
je n’y ai pas mis la main.”

And with this assertion he commenced the reading.

For his misfortune he had chosen a French translation of what he called
“un drame de Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu,” he further announced,
“de ces sots païens, les Anglais.” How far otherwise he would have
characterized him had his temper not been upset, I scarcely need
intimate.

Of course, the translation being French, was very inefficient; nor did
I make any particular effort to conceal the contempt which some of its
forlorn lapses were calculated to excite. Not that it behoved or
beseemed me to say anything: but one can occasionally look the
opinion it is forbidden to embody in words. Monsieur’s lunettes being
on the alert, he gleaned up every stray look; I don’t think he lost
one: the consequence was, his eyes soon discarded a screen, that their
blaze might sparkle free, and he waxed hotter at the north pole to
which he had voluntarily exiled himself, than, considering the general
temperature of the room, it would have been reasonable to become under
the vertical ray of Cancer itself.

The reading over, it appeared problematic whether he would depart with
his anger unexpressed, or whether he would give it vent. Suppression
was not much in his habits; but still, what had been done to him
definite enough to afford matter for overt reproof? I had not uttered a
sound, and could not justly be deemed amenable to reprimand or penalty
for having permitted a slightly freer action than usual to the muscles
about my eyes and mouth.

The supper, consisting of bread, and milk diluted with tepid water, was
brought in. In respectful consideration of the Professor’s presence,
the rolls and glasses were allowed to stand instead of being
immediately handed round.

“Take your supper, ladies,” said he, seeming to be occupied in making
marginal notes to his “Williams Shackspire.” They took it. I also
accepted a roll and glass, but being now more than ever interested in
my work, I kept my seat of punishment, and wrought while I munched my
bread and sipped my beverage, the whole with easy sang-froid; with a
certain snugness of composure, indeed, scarcely in my habits, and
pleasantly novel to my feelings. It seemed as if the presence of a
nature so restless, chafing, thorny as that of M. Paul absorbed all
feverish and unsettling influences like a magnet, and left me none but
such as were placid and harmonious.

He rose. “Will he go away without saying another word?” Yes; he turned
to the door.

No: he re-turned on his steps; but only, perhaps, to take his
pencil-case, which had been left on the table.

He took it—shut the pencil in and out, broke its point against the
wood, re-cut and pocketed it, and . . . walked promptly up to me.

The girls and teachers, gathered round the other table, were talking
pretty freely: they always talked at meals; and, from the constant
habit of speaking fast and loud at such times, did not now subdue their
voices much.

M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked at what I was working; and I
said I was making a watchguard.

He asked, “For whom?” And I answered, “For a gentleman—one of my
friends.”

M. Paul stooped down and proceeded—as novel-writers say, and, as was
literally true in his case—to “hiss” into my ear some poignant words.

He said that, of all the women he knew, I was the one who could make
herself the most consummately unpleasant: I was she with whom it was
least possible to live on friendly terms. I had a “caractère
intraitable,” and perverse to a miracle. How I managed it, or what
possessed me, he, for his part, did not know; but with whatever pacific
and amicable intentions a person accosted me—crac! I turned concord to
discord, good-will to enmity. He was sure, he—M. Paul—wished me well
enough; he had never done me any harm that he knew of; he might, at
least, he supposed, claim a right to be regarded as a neutral
acquaintance, guiltless of hostile sentiments: yet, how I behaved to
him! With what pungent vivacities—what an impetus of mutiny—what a
“fougue” of injustice!

Here I could not avoid opening my eyes somewhat wide, and even slipping
in a slight interjectional observation: “Vivacities? Impetus? Fougue? I
didn’t know….”

“Chut! à l’instant! There! there I went—vive comme la poudre!” He was
sorry—he was very sorry: for my sake he grieved over the hapless
peculiarity. This “emportement,” this “chaleur”—generous, perhaps, but
excessive—would yet, he feared, do me a mischief. It was a pity: I was
not—he believed, in his soul—wholly without good qualities: and would I
but hear reason, and be more sedate, more sober, less “en l’air,” less
“coquette,” less taken by show, less prone to set an undue value on
outside excellence—to make much of the attentions of people remarkable
chiefly for so many feet of stature, “des couleurs de poupée,” “un nez
plus ou moins bien fait,” and an enormous amount of fatuity—I might yet
prove an useful, perhaps an exemplary character. But, as it was—And
here, the little man’s voice was for a minute choked.

I would have looked up at him, or held out my hand, or said a soothing
word; but I was afraid, if I stirred, I should either laugh or cry; so
odd, in all this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd.

I thought he had nearly done: but no; he sat down that he might go on
at his ease.

“While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, he would dare my anger
for the sake of my good, and would venture to refer to a change he had
noticed in my dress. He was free to confess that when he first knew
me—or, rather, was in the habit of catching a passing glimpse of me
from time to time—I satisfied him on this point: the gravity, the
austere simplicity, obvious in this particular, were such as to inspire
the highest hopes for my best interests. What fatal influence had
impelled me lately to introduce flowers under the brim of my bonnet, to
wear ‘des cols brodés,’ and even to appear on one occasion in a
scarlet gown—he might indeed conjecture, but, for the present, would
not openly declare.”

Again I interrupted, and this time not without an accent at once
indignant and horror-struck.

“Scarlet, Monsieur Paul? It was not scarlet! It was pink, and pale pink
too, and further subdued by black lace.”

“Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, pea-green or sky-blue, it was all
one: these were all flaunting, giddy colours; and as to the lace I
talked of, that was but a ‘colifichet de plus.’” And he sighed over
my degeneracy. “He could not, he was sorry to say, be so particular on
this theme as he could wish: not possessing the exact names of these
‘babioles,’ he might run into small verbal errors which would not fail
to lay him open to my sarcasm, and excite my unhappily sudden and
passionate disposition. He would merely say, in general terms—and in
these general terms he knew he was correct—that my costume had of late
assumed ‘des façons mondaines,’ which it wounded him to see.”

What “façons mondaines” he discovered in my present winter merino and
plain white collar, I own it puzzled me to guess: and when I asked him,
he said it was all made with too much attention to effect—and besides,
“had I not a bow of ribbon at my neck?”

“And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, Monsieur, you would
necessarily disapprove of a thing like this for a gentleman?”—holding
up my bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole reply was a
groan—I suppose over my levity.

After sitting some minutes in silence, and watching the progress of the
chain, at which I now wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired:
“Whether what he had just said would have the effect of making me
entirely detest him?”

I hardly remember what answer I made, or how it came about; I don’t
think I spoke at all, but I know we managed to bid good-night on
friendly terms: and, even after M. Paul had reached the door, he turned
back just to explain, “that he would not be understood to speak in
entire condemnation of the scarlet dress” (“Pink! pink!” I threw in);
“that he had no intention to deny it the merit of looking rather
well” (the fact was, M. Emanuel’s taste in colours decidedly leaned to
the brilliant); “only he wished to counsel me, whenever I wore it, to
do so in the same spirit as if its material were ‘bure,’ and its hue
‘gris de poussière.’”

“And the flowers under my bonnet, Monsieur?” I asked. “They are very
little ones—?”

“Keep them little, then,” said he. “Permit them not to become
full-blown.”

“And the bow, Monsieur—the bit of ribbon?”

“Va pour le ruban!” was the propitious answer.

And so we settled it.

“Well done, Lucy Snowe!” cried I to myself; “you have come in for a
pretty lecture—brought on yourself a ‘rude savant,’ and all through
your wicked fondness for worldly vanities! Who would have thought it?
You deemed yourself a melancholy sober-sides enough! Miss Fanshawe
there regards you as a second Diogenes. M. de Bassompierre, the other
day, politely turned the conversation when it ran on the wild gifts of
the actress Vashti, because, as he kindly said, ‘Miss Snowe looked
uncomfortable.’ Dr. John Bretton knows you only as ‘quiet Lucy’—‘a
creature inoffensive as a shadow;’ he has said, and you have heard him
say it: ‘Lucy’s disadvantages spring from over-gravity in tastes and
manner—want of colour in character and costume.’ Such are your own and
your friends’ impressions; and behold! there starts up a little man,
differing diametrically from all these, roundly charging you with being
too airy and cheery—too volatile and versatile—too flowery and coloury.
This harsh little man—this pitiless censor—gathers up all your poor
scattered sins of vanity, your luckless chiffon of rose-colour, your
small fringe of a wreath, your small scrap of ribbon, your silly bit of
lace, and calls you to account for the lot, and for each item. You are
well habituated to be passed by as a shadow in Life’s sunshine: it is a
new thing to see one testily lifting his hand to screen his eyes,
because you tease him with an obtrusive ray.”