Villette

RATERNITY.

“Oubliez les Professeurs.” So said Madame Beck. Madame Beck was a wise
woman, but she should not have uttered those words. To do so was a
mistake. That night she should have left me calm—not excited,
indifferent, not interested, isolated in my own estimation and that of
others—not connected, even in idea, with this second person whom I was
to forget.

Forget him? Ah! they took a sage plan to make me forget him—the
wiseheads! They showed me how good he was; they made of my dear little
man a stainless little hero. And then they had prated about his manner
of loving. What means had I, before this day, of being certain whether
he could love at all or not?

I had known him jealous, suspicious; I had seen about him certain
tendernesses, fitfulnesses—a softness which came like a warm air, and a
ruth which passed like early dew, dried in the heat of his
irritabilities: this was all I had seen. And they, Père Silas and
Modeste Maria Beck (that these two wrought in concert I could not
doubt) opened up the adytum of his heart—showed me one grand love, the
child of this southern nature’s youth, born so strong and perfect, that
it had laughed at Death himself, despised his mean rape of matter,
clung to immortal spirit, and in victory and faith, had watched beside
a tomb twenty years.

This had been done—not idly: this was not a mere hollow indulgence of
sentiment; he had proven his fidelity by the consecration of his best
energies to an unselfish purpose, and attested it by limitless personal
sacrifices: for those once dear to her he prized—he had laid down
vengeance, and taken up a cross.

Now, as for Justine Marie, I knew what she was as well as if I had seen
her. I knew she was well enough; there were girls like her in Madame
Beck’s school—phlegmatics—pale, slow, inert, but kind-natured, neutral
of evil, undistinguished for good.

If she wore angels’ wings, I knew whose poet-fancy conferred them. If
her forehead shone luminous with the reflex of a halo, I knew in the
fire of whose irids that circlet of holy flame had generation.

Was I, then, to be frightened by Justine Marie? Was the picture of a
pale dead nun to rise, an eternal barrier? And what of the charities
which absorbed his worldly goods? What of his heart sworn to virginity?

Madame Beck—Père Silas—you should not have suggested these questions.
They were at once the deepest puzzle, the strongest obstruction, and
the keenest stimulus, I had ever felt. For a week of nights and days I
fell asleep—I dreamt, and I woke upon these two questions. In the whole
world there was no answer to them, except where one dark little man
stood, sat, walked, lectured, under the head-piece of a bandit
bonnet-grec, and within the girth of a sorry paletôt, much be-inked,
and no little adust.

After that visit to the Rue des Mages, I did want to see him again. I
felt as if—knowing what I now knew—his countenance would offer a page
more lucid, more interesting than ever; I felt a longing to trace in it
the imprint of that primitive devotedness, the signs of that
half-knightly, half-saintly chivalry which the priest’s narrative
imputed to his nature. He had become my Christian hero: under that
character I wanted to view him.

Nor was opportunity slow to favour; my new impressions underwent her
test the next day. Yes: I was granted an interview with my “Christian
hero”—an interview not very heroic, or sentimental, or biblical, but
lively enough in its way.

About three o’clock of the afternoon, the peace of the first
classe—safely established, as it seemed, under the serene sway of
Madame Beck, who, in propria persona, was giving one of her orderly
and useful lessons—this peace, I say, suffered a sudden fracture by the
wild inburst of a paletôt.

Nobody at the moment was quieter than myself. Eased of responsibility
by Madame Beck’s presence, soothed by her uniform tones, pleased and
edified with her clear exposition of the subject in hand (for she
taught well), I sat bent over my desk, drawing—that is, copying an
elaborate line engraving, tediously working up my copy to the finish of
the original, for that was my practical notion of art; and, strange to
say, I took extreme pleasure in the labour, and could even produce
curiously finical Chinese facsimiles of steel or mezzotint
plates—things about as valuable as so many achievements in
worsted-work, but I thought pretty well of them in those days.

What was the matter? My drawing, my pencils, my precious copy, gathered
into one crushed-up handful, perished from before my sight; I myself
appeared to be shaken or emptied out of my chair, as a solitary and
withered nutmeg might be emptied out of a spice-box by an excited cook.
That chair and my desk, seized by the wild paletôt, one under each
sleeve, were borne afar; in a second, I followed the furniture; in two
minutes they and I were fixed in the centre of the grand salle—a vast
adjoining room, seldom used save for dancing and choral
singing-lessons—fixed with an emphasis which seemed to prohibit the
remotest hope of our ever being permitted to stir thence again.

Having partially collected my scared wits, I found myself in the
presence of two men, gentlemen, I suppose I should say—one dark, the
other light—one having a stiff, half-military air, and wearing a
braided surtout; the other partaking, in garb and bearing, more of the
careless aspect of the student or artist class: both flourishing in
full magnificence of moustaches, whiskers, and imperial. M. Emanuel
stood a little apart from these; his countenance and eyes expressed
strong choler; he held forth his hand with his tribune gesture.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “your business is to prove to these gentlemen
that I am no liar. You will answer, to the best of your ability, such
questions as they shall put. You will also write on such theme as they
shall select. In their eyes, it appears, I hold the position of an
unprincipled impostor. I write essays; and, with deliberate forgery,
sign to them my pupils’ names, and boast of them as their work. You
will disprove this charge.”

Grand ciel! Here was the show-trial, so long evaded, come on me like a
thunder-clap. These two fine, braided, mustachioed, sneering
personages, were none other than dandy professors of the
college—Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte—a pair of cold-blooded fops
and pedants, sceptics, and scoffers. It seems that M. Paul had been
rashly exhibiting something I had written—something, he had never once
praised, or even mentioned, in my hearing, and which I deemed
forgotten. The essay was not remarkable at all; it only seemed
remarkable, compared with the average productions of foreign
school-girls; in an English establishment it would have passed scarce
noticed. Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte had thought proper to
question its genuineness, and insinuate a cheat; I was now to bear my
testimony to the truth, and to be put to the torture of their
examination.

A memorable scene ensued.

They began with classics. A dead blank. They went on to French history.
I hardly knew Mérovée from Pharamond. They tried me in various
’ologies, and still only got a shake of the head, and an unchanging “Je
n’en sais rien.”

After an expressive pause, they proceeded to matters of general
information, broaching one or two subjects which I knew pretty well,
and on which I had often reflected. M. Emanuel, who had hitherto stood
looking on, dark as the winter-solstice, brightened up somewhat; he
thought I should now show myself at least no fool.

He learned his error. Though answers to the questions surged up fast,
my mind filling like a rising well, ideas were there, but not words. I
either could not, or would not speak—I am not sure which: partly, I
think, my nerves had got wrong, and partly my humour was crossed.

I heard one of my examiners—he of the braided surtout—whisper to his
co-professor, “Est-elle donc idiote?”

“Yes,” I thought, “an idiot she is, and always will be, for such as
you.”

But I suffered—suffered cruelly; I saw the damps gather on M. Paul’s
brow, and his eye spoke a passionate yet sad reproach. He would not
believe in my total lack of popular cleverness; he thought I could be
prompt if I would.

At last, to relieve him, the professors, and myself, I stammered out:

“Gentlemen, you had better let me go; you will get no good of me; as
you say, I am an idiot.”

I wish I could have spoken with calm and dignity, or I wish my sense
had sufficed to make me hold my tongue; that traitor tongue tripped,
faltered. Beholding the judges cast on M. Emanuel a hard look of
triumph, and hearing the distressed tremor of my own voice, out I burst
in a fit of choking tears. The emotion was far more of anger than
grief; had I been a man and strong, I could have challenged that pair
on the spot—but it was emotion, and I would rather have been scourged
than betrayed it.

The incapables! Could they not see at once the crude hand of a novice
in that composition they called a forgery? The subject was classical.
When M. Paul dictated the trait on which the essay was to turn, I heard
it for the first time; the matter was new to me, and I had no material
for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously
constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then
clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim
I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my
facts were found, selected, and properly jointed; nor could I rest from
research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the
strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity
sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was
not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been sown in Spring,
grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter;
whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs
my lapful, and shred them green into the pot. Messieurs Boissec and
Rochemorte did not perceive this. They mistook my work for the work of
a ripe scholar.

They would not yet let me go: I must sit down and write before them. As
I dipped my pen in the ink with a shaking hand, and surveyed the white
paper with eyes half-blinded and overflowing, one of my judges began
mincingly to apologize for the pain he caused.

“Nous agissons dans l’intérêt de la vérité. Nous ne voulons pas vous
blesser,” said he.

Scorn gave me nerve. I only answered,—

“Dictate, Monsieur.”

Rochemorte named this theme: “Human Justice.”

Human Justice! What was I to make of it? Blank, cold abstraction,
unsuggestive to me of one inspiring idea; and there stood M. Emanuel,
sad as Saul, and stern as Joab, and there triumphed his accusers.

At these two I looked. I was gathering my courage to tell them that I
would neither write nor speak another word for their satisfaction, that
their theme did not suit, nor their presence inspire me, and that,
notwithstanding, whoever threw the shadow of a doubt on M. Emanuel’s
honour, outraged that truth of which they had announced themselves
the—champions: I meant to utter all this, I say, when suddenly, a
light darted on memory.

Those two faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and
whisker—those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous
visages—were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full
gaslight from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me
to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt
morally certain, were the very heroes who had driven a friendless
foreigner beyond her reckoning and her strength, chased her breathless
over a whole quarter of the town.

“Pious mentors!” thought I. “Pure guides for youth! If ‘Human Justice’
were what she ought to be, you two would scarce hold your present post,
or enjoy your present credit.”

An idea once seized, I fell to work. “Human Justice” rushed before me
in novel guise, a red, random beldame, with arms akimbo. I saw her in
her house, the den of confusion: servants called to her for orders or
help which she did not give; beggars stood at her door waiting and
starving unnoticed; a swarm of children, sick and quarrelsome, crawled
round her feet, and yelled in her ears appeals for notice, sympathy,
cure, redress. The honest woman cared for none of these things. She had
a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her own solace in a short
black pipe, and a bottle of Mrs. Sweeny’s soothing syrup; she smoked
and she sipped, and she enjoyed her paradise; and whenever a cry of the
suffering souls about her pierced her ears too keenly—my jolly dame
seized the poker or the hearth-brush: if the offender was weak,
wronged, and sickly, she effectually settled him: if he was strong,
lively, and violent, she only menaced, then plunged her hand in her
deep pouch, and flung a liberal shower of sugar-plums.

Such was the sketch of “Human Justice,” scratched hurriedly on paper,
and placed at the service of Messrs. Boissec and Rochemorte. M. Emanuel
read it over my shoulder. Waiting no comment, I curtsied to the trio,
and withdrew.

After school that day, M. Paul and I again met. Of course the meeting
did not at first run smooth; there was a crow to pluck with him; that
forced examination could not be immediately digested. A crabbed
dialogue terminated in my being called “une petite moqueuse et
sans-cœur,” and in Monsieur’s temporary departure.

Not wishing him to go quite away, only desiring he should feel that
such a transport as he had that day given way to, could not be indulged
with perfect impunity, I was not sorry to see him, soon after,
gardening in the berceau. He approached the glass door; I drew near
also. We spoke of some flowers growing round it. By-and-by Monsieur
laid down his spade; by-and-by he recommenced conversation, passed to
other subjects, and at last touched a point of interest.

Conscious that his proceeding of that day was specially open to a
charge of extravagance, M. Paul half apologized; he half regretted,
too, the fitfulness of his moods at all times, yet he hinted that some
allowance ought to be made for him. “But,” said he, “I can hardly
expect it at your hands, Miss Lucy; you know neither me, nor my
position, nor my history.”

His history. I took up the word at once; I pursued the idea.

“No, Monsieur,” I rejoined. “Of course, as you say, I know neither your
history, nor your position, nor your sacrifices, nor any of your
sorrows, or trials, or affections, or fidelities. Oh, no! I know
nothing about you; you are for me altogether a stranger.”

“Hein?” he murmured, arching his brows in surprise.

“You know, Monsieur, I only see you in classe—stern, dogmatic, hasty,
imperious. I only hear of you in town as active and wilful, quick to
originate, hasty to lead, but slow to persuade, and hard to bend. A man
like you, without ties, can have no attachments; without dependants, no
duties. All we, with whom you come in contact, are machines, which you
thrust here and there, inconsiderate of their feelings. You seek your
recreations in public, by the light of the evening chandelier: this
school and yonder college are your workshops, where you fabricate the
ware called pupils. I don’t so much as know where you live; it is
natural to take it for granted that you have no home, and need none.”

“I am judged,” said he. “Your opinion of me is just what I thought it
was. For you I am neither a man nor a Christian. You see me void of
affection and religion, unattached by friend or family, unpiloted by
principle or faith. It is well, Mademoiselle; such is our reward in
this life.”

“You are a philosopher, Monsieur; a cynic philosopher” (and I looked at
his paletôt, of which he straightway brushed the dim sleeve with his
hand), “despising the foibles of humanity—above its
luxuries—independent of its comforts.”

“Et vous, Mademoiselle? vous êtes proprette et douillette, et
affreusement insensible, par-dessus le marché.”

“But, in short, Monsieur, now I think of it, you must live somewhere?
Do tell me where; and what establishment of servants do you keep?”

With a fearful projection of the under-lip, implying an impetus of
scorn the most decided, he broke out—

“Je vis dans un trou! I inhabit a den, Miss—a cavern, where you would
not put your dainty nose. Once, with base shame of speaking the whole
truth, I talked about my ‘study’ in that college: know now that this
‘study’ is my whole abode; my chamber is there and my drawing-room. As
for my ‘establishment of servants’” (mimicking my voice) “they number
ten; les voilà.”

And he grimly spread, close under my eyes, his ten fingers.

“I black my boots,” pursued he savagely. “I brush my paletôt.”

“No, Monsieur, it is too plain; you never do that,” was my parenthesis.

“Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my
supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless;
nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and
nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn
like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in
purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to
whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom
of heaven.”

“Ah, Monsieur; but I know!”

“What do you know? many things, I verily believe; yet not me, Lucy!”

“I know that you have a pleasant old house in a pleasant old square of
the Basse-Ville—why don’t you go and live there?”

“Hein?” muttered he again.

“I liked it much, Monsieur; with the steps ascending to the door, the
grey flags in front, the nodding trees behind—real trees, not
shrubs—trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the
boudoir-oratoire—you should make that room your study; it is so quiet
and solemn.”

He eyed me closely; he half-smiled, half-coloured. “Where did you pick
up all that? Who told you?” he asked.

“Nobody told me. Did I dream it, Monsieur, do you think?”

“Can I enter into your visions? Can I guess a woman’s waking thoughts,
much less her sleeping fantasies?”

“If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I
saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic—old, too, and
picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce
reach to my elbow—her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a gown
bright as lapis-lazuli—a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was decked
with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a beautiful
sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in two and bent
double; she seemed also to have outlived the common years of humanity,
and to have attained those which are only labour and sorrow. She was
become morose—almost malevolent; yet somebody, it appears, cared for
her in her infirmities—somebody forgave her trespasses, hoping to have
his trespasses forgiven. They lived together, these three people—the
mistress, the chaplain, the servant—all old, all feeble, all sheltered
under one kind wing.”

He covered with his hand the upper part of his face, but did not
conceal his mouth, where I saw hovering an expression I liked.

“I see you have entered into my secrets,” said he, “but how was it
done?”

So I told him how—the commission on which I had been sent, the storm
which had detained me, the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the
priest.

“As I sat waiting for the rain to cease, Père Silas whiled away the
time with a story,” I said.

“A story! What story? Père Silas is no romancist.”

“Shall I tell Monsieur the tale?”

“Yes: begin at the beginning. Let me hear some of Miss Lucy’s
French—her best or her worst—I don’t much care which: let us have a
good poignée of barbarisms, and a bounteous dose of the insular
accent.”

“Monsieur is not going to be gratified by a tale of ambitious
proportions, and the spectacle of the narrator sticking fast in the
midst. But I will tell him the title—the ‘Priest’s Pupil.’”

“Bah!” said he, the swarthy flush again dyeing his dark cheek. “The
good old father could not have chosen a worse subject; it is his weak
point. But what of the ‘Priest’s Pupil?’”

“Oh! many things.”

“You may as well define what things. I mean to know.”

“There was the pupil’s youth, the pupil’s manhood;—his avarice, his
ingratitude, his implacability, his inconstancy. Such a bad pupil,
Monsieur!—so thankless, cold-hearted, unchivalrous, unforgiving!”

“Et puis?” said he, taking a cigar.

“Et puis,” I pursued, “he underwent calamities which one did not
pity—bore them in a spirit one did not admire—endured wrongs for which
one felt no sympathy; finally took the unchristian revenge of heaping
coals of fire on his adversary’s head.”

“You have not told me all,” said he.

“Nearly all, I think: I have indicated the heads of Père Silas’s
chapters.”

“You have forgotten one—that which touched on the pupil’s lack of
affection—on his hard, cold, monkish heart.”

“True; I remember now. Père Silas did say that his vocation was
almost that of a priest—that his life was considered consecrated.”

“By what bonds or duties?”

“By the ties of the past and the charities of the present.”

“You have, then, the whole situation?”

“I have now told Monsieur all that was told me.”

Some meditative minutes passed.

“Now, Mademoiselle Lucy, look at me, and with that truth which I
believe you never knowingly violate, answer me one question. Raise your
eyes; rest them on mine; have no hesitation; fear not to trust me—I am
a man to be trusted.”

I raised my eyes.

“Knowing me thoroughly now—all my antecedents, all my
responsibilities—having long known my faults, can you and I still be
friends?”

“If Monsieur wants a friend in me, I shall be glad to have a friend in
him.”

“But a close friend I mean—intimate and real—kindred in all but blood.
Will Miss Lucy be the sister of a very poor, fettered, burdened,
encumbered man?”

I could not answer him in words, yet I suppose I did answer him; he
took my hand, which found comfort, in the shelter of his. His
friendship was not a doubtful, wavering benefit—a cold, distant hope—a
sentiment so brittle as not to bear the weight of a finger: I at once
felt (or thought I felt) its support like that of some rock.

“When I talk of friendship, I mean true friendship,” he repeated
emphatically; and I could hardly believe that words so earnest had
blessed my ear; I hardly could credit the reality of that kind, anxious
look he gave. If he really wished for my confidence and regard, and
really would give me his—why, it seemed to me that life could offer
nothing more or better. In that case, I was become strong and rich: in
a moment I was made substantially happy. To ascertain the fact, to fix
and seal it, I asked—

“Is Monsieur quite serious? Does he really think he needs me, and can
take an interest in me as a sister?”

“Surely, surely,” said he; “a lonely man like me, who has no sister,
must be but too glad to find in some woman’s heart a sister’s pure
affection.”

“And dare I rely on Monsieur’s regard? Dare I speak to him when I am so
inclined?”

“My little sister must make her own experiments,” said he; “I will give
no promises. She must tease and try her wayward brother till she has
drilled him into what she wishes. After all, he is no inductile
material in some hands.”

While he spoke, the tone of his voice, the light of his now
affectionate eye, gave me such a pleasure as, certainly, I had never
felt. I envied no girl her lover, no bride her bridegroom, no wife her
husband; I was content with this my voluntary, self-offering friend. If
he would but prove reliable, and he looked reliable, what, beyond his
friendship, could I ever covet? But, if all melted like a dream, as
once before had happened—?

“Qu’est-ce donc? What is it?” said he, as this thought threw its weight
on my heart, its shadow on my countenance. I told him; and after a
moment’s pause, and a thoughtful smile, he showed me how an equal
fear—lest I should weary of him, a man of moods so difficult and
fitful—had haunted his mind for more than one day, or one month.

On hearing this, a quiet courage cheered me. I ventured a word of
re-assurance. That word was not only tolerated; its repetition was
courted. I grew quite happy—strangely happy—in making him secure,
content, tranquil. Yesterday, I could not have believed that earth
held, or life afforded, moments like the few I was now passing.
Countless times it had been my lot to watch apprehended sorrow close
darkly in; but to see unhoped-for happiness take form, find place, and
grow more real as the seconds sped, was indeed a new experience.

“Lucy,” said M. Paul, speaking low, and still holding my hand, “did you
see a picture in the boudoir of the old house?”

“I did; a picture painted on a panel.”

“The portrait of a nun?”

“Yes.”

“You heard her history?”

“Yes.”

“You remember what we saw that night in the berceau?”

“I shall never forget it.”

“You did not connect the two ideas; that would be folly?”

“I thought of the apparition when I saw the portrait,” said I; which
was true enough.

“You did not, nor will you fancy,” pursued he, “that a saint in heaven
perturbs herself with rivalries of earth? Protestants are rarely
superstitious; these morbid fancies will not beset you?”

“I know not what to think of this matter; but I believe a perfectly
natural solution of this seeming mystery will one day be arrived at.”

“Doubtless, doubtless. Besides, no good-living woman—much less a pure,
happy spirit—would trouble amity like ours—n’est-il pas vrai?”

Ere I could answer, Fifine Beck burst in, rosy and abrupt, calling out
that I was wanted. Her mother was going into town to call on some
English family, who had applied for a prospectus: my services were
needed as interpreter. The interruption was not unseasonable:
sufficient for the day is always the evil; for this hour, its good
sufficed. Yet I should have liked to ask M. Paul whether the “morbid
fancies,” against which he warned me, wrought in his own brain.