Villette

.
THE HAPPY PAIR.

The day succeeding this remarkable Midsummer night, proved no common
day. I do not mean that it brought signs in heaven above, or portents
on the earth beneath; nor do I allude to meteorological phenomena, to
storm, flood, or whirlwind. On the contrary: the sun rose jocund, with
a July face. Morning decked her beauty with rubies, and so filled her
lap with roses, that they fell from her in showers, making her path
blush: the Hours woke fresh as nymphs, and emptying on the early hills
their dew-vials, they stepped out dismantled of vapour: shadowless,
azure, and glorious, they led the sun’s steeds on a burning and
unclouded course.

In short, it was as fine a day as the finest summer could boast; but I
doubt whether I was not the sole inhabitant of the Rue Fossette, who
cared or remembered to note this pleasant fact. Another thought busied
all other heads; a thought, indeed, which had its share in my
meditations; but this master consideration, not possessing for me so
entire a novelty, so overwhelming a suddenness, especially so dense a
mystery, as it offered to the majority of my co-speculators thereon,
left me somewhat more open than the rest to any collateral observation
or impression.

Still, while walking in the garden, feeling the sunshine, and marking
the blooming and growing plants, I pondered the same subject the whole
house discussed.

What subject?

Merely this. When matins came to be said, there was a place vacant in
the first rank of boarders. When breakfast was served, there remained a
coffee-cup unclaimed. When the housemaid made the beds, she found in
one, a bolster laid lengthwise, clad in a cap and night-gown; and when
Ginevra Fanshawe’s music-mistress came early, as usual, to give the
morning lesson, that accomplished and promising young person, her
pupil, failed utterly to be forthcoming.

High and low was Miss Fanshawe sought; through length and breadth was
the house ransacked; vainly; not a trace, not an indication, not so
much as a scrap of a billet rewarded the search; the nymph was
vanished, engulfed in the past night, like a shooting star swallowed up
by darkness.

Deep was the dismay of surveillante teachers, deeper the horror of the
defaulting directress. Never had I seen Madame Beck so pale or so
appalled. Here was a blow struck at her tender part, her weak side;
here was damage done to her interest. How, too, had the untoward event
happened? By what outlet had the fugitive taken wing? Not a casement
was found unfastened, not a pane of glass broken; all the doors were
bolted secure. Never to this day has Madame Beck obtained satisfaction
on this point, nor indeed has anybody else concerned, save and
excepting one, Lucy Snowe, who could not forget how, to facilitate a
certain enterprise, a certain great door had been drawn softly to its
lintel, closed, indeed, but neither bolted nor secure. The thundering
carriage-and-pair encountered were now likewise recalled, as well as
that puzzling signal, the waved handkerchief.

From these premises, and one or two others, inaccessible to any but
myself, I could draw but one inference. It was a case of elopement.
Morally certain on this head, and seeing Madame Beck’s profound
embarrassment, I at last communicated my conviction. Having alluded to
M. de Hamal’s suit, I found, as I expected, that Madame Beck was
perfectly au fait to that affair. She had long since discussed it with
Mrs. Cholmondeley, and laid her own responsibility in the business on
that lady’s shoulders. To Mrs. Cholmondeley and M. de Bassompierre she
now had recourse.

We found that the Hôtel Crécy was already alive to what had happened.
Ginevra had written to her cousin Paulina, vaguely signifying hymeneal
intentions; communications had been received from the family of de
Hamal; M. de Bassompierre was on the track of the fugitives. He
overtook them too late.

In the course of the week, the post brought me a note. I may as well
transcribe it; it contains explanation on more than one point:—

‘DEAR OLD TIM “(short for Timon),—” I am off you see—gone like a shot.
Alfred and I intended to be married in this way almost from the first;
we never meant to be spliced in the humdrum way of other people; Alfred
has too much spirit for that, and so have I—Dieu merci! Do you know,
Alfred, who used to call you ‘the dragon,’ has seen so much of you
during the last few months, that he begins to feel quite friendly
towards you. He hopes you won’t miss him now that he has gone; he begs
to apologize for any little trouble he may have given you. He is afraid
he rather inconvenienced you once when he came upon you in the grenier,
just as you were reading a letter seemingly of the most special
interest; but he could not resist the temptation to give you a start,
you appeared so wonderfully taken up with your correspondent. En
revanche, he says you once frightened him by rushing in for a dress or
a shawl, or some other chiffon, at the moment when he had struck a
light, and was going to take a quiet whiff of his cigar, while waiting
for me.

“Do you begin to comprehend by this time that M. le Comte de Hamal was
the nun of the attic, and that he came to see your humble servant? I
will tell you how he managed it. You know he has the entrée of the
Athénée, where two or three of his nephews, the sons of his eldest
sister, Madame de Melcy, are students. You know the court of the
Athénée is on the other side of the high wall bounding your walk, the
allée défendue. Alfred can climb as well as he can dance or fence: his
amusement was to make the escalade of our pensionnat by mounting, first
the wall; then—by the aid of that high tree overspreading the grand
berceau, and resting some of its boughs on the roof of the lower
buildings of our premises—he managed to scale the first classe and the
grand salle. One night, by the way, he fell out of this tree, tore down
some of the branches, nearly broke his own neck, and after all, in
running away, got a terrible fright, and was nearly caught by two
people, Madame Beck and M. Emanuel, he thinks, walking in the alley.
From the grande salle the ascent is not difficult to the highest block
of building, finishing in the great garret. The skylight, you know, is,
day and night, left half open for air; by the skylight he entered.
Nearly a year ago I chanced to tell him our legend of the nun; that
suggested his romantic idea of the spectral disguise, which I think you
must allow he has very cleverly carried out.

“But for the nun’s black gown and white veil, he would have been caught
again and again both by you and that tiger-Jesuit, M. Paul. He thinks
you both capital ghost-seers, and very brave. What I wonder at is,
rather your secretiveness than your courage. How could you endure the
visitations of that long spectre, time after time, without crying out,
telling everybody, and rousing the whole house and neighbourhood?

“Oh, and how did you like the nun as a bed-fellow? I dressed her up:
didn’t I do it well? Did you shriek when you saw her: I should have
gone mad; but then you have such nerves!—real iron and bend-leather! I
believe you feel nothing. You haven’t the same sensitiveness that a
person of my constitution has. You seem to me insensible both to pain
and fear and grief. You are a real old Diogenes.

“Well, dear grandmother! and are you not mightily angry at my moonlight
flitting and run away match? I assure you it is excellent fun, and I
did it partly to spite that minx, Paulina, and that bear, Dr. John: to
show them that, with all their airs, I could get married as well as
they. M. de Bassompierre was at first in a strange fume with Alfred; he
threatened a prosecution for ‘détournement de mineur,’ and I know not
what; he was so abominably in earnest, that I found myself forced to do
a little bit of the melodramatic—go down on my knees, sob, cry, drench
three pocket-handkerchiefs. Of course, ‘mon oncle’ soon gave in;
indeed, where was the use of making a fuss? I am married, and that’s
all about it. He still says our marriage is not legal, because I am not
of age, forsooth! As if that made any difference! I am just as much
married as if I were a hundred. However, we are to be married again,
and I am to have a trousseau, and Mrs. Cholmondeley is going to
superintend it; and there are some hopes that M. de Bassompierre will
give me a decent portion, which will be very convenient, as dear Alfred
has nothing but his nobility, native and hereditary, and his pay. I
only wish uncle would do things unconditionally, in a generous,
gentleman-like fashion; he is so disagreeable as to make the dowry
depend on Alfred’s giving his written promise that he will never touch
cards or dice from the day it is paid down. They accuse my angel of a
tendency to play: I don’t know anything about that, but I do know he
is a dear, adorable creature.

“I cannot sufficiently extol the genius with which de Hamal managed our
flight. How clever in him to select the night of the fête, when Madame
(for he knows her habits), as he said, would infallibly be absent at
the concert in the park. I suppose you must have gone with her. I
watched you rise and leave the dormitory about eleven o’clock. How you
returned alone, and on foot, I cannot conjecture. That surely was you
we met in the narrow old Rue St. Jean? Did you see me wave my
handkerchief from the carriage window?

“Adieu! Rejoice in my good luck: congratulate me on my supreme
happiness, and believe me, dear cynic and misanthrope, yours, in the
best of health and spirits,

GINEVRA LAURA DE HAMAL,
née FANSHAWE.

“P.S.—Remember, I am a countess now. Papa, mamma, and the girls at
home, will be delighted to hear that. ‘My daughter the Countess!’ ‘My
sister the Countess!’ Bravo! Sounds rather better than Mrs. John
Bretton, hein?”

In winding up Mistress Fanshawe’s memoirs, the reader will no doubt
expect to hear that she came finally to bitter expiation of her
youthful levities. Of course, a large share of suffering lies in
reserve for her future.

A few words will embody my farther knowledge respecting her.

I saw her towards the close of her honeymoon. She called on Madame
Beck, and sent for me into the salon. She rushed into my arms laughing.
She looked very blooming and beautiful: her curls were longer, her
cheeks rosier than ever: her white bonnet and her Flanders veil, her
orange-flowers and her bride’s dress, became her mightily.

“I have got my portion!” she cried at once; (Ginevra ever stuck to the
substantial; I always thought there was a good trading element in her
composition, much as she scorned the “bourgeoise;”) “and uncle de
Bassompierre is quite reconciled. I don’t mind his calling Alfred a
‘nincompoop’—that’s only his coarse Scotch breeding; and I believe
Paulina envies me, and Dr. John is wild with jealousy—fit to blow his
brains out—and I’m so happy! I really think I’ve hardly anything left
to wish for—unless it be a carriage and an hotel, and, oh! I—must
introduce you to ‘mon mari.’ Alfred, come here!”

And Alfred appeared from the inner salon, where he was talking to
Madame Beck, receiving the blended felicitations and reprimands of that
lady. I was presented under my various names: the Dragon, Diogenes, and
Timon. The young Colonel was very polite. He made me a prettily-turned,
neatly-worded apology, about the ghost-visits, &c., concluding with
saying that “the best excuse for all his iniquities stood there!”
pointing to his bride.

And then the bride sent him back to Madame Beck, and she took me to
herself, and proceeded literally to suffocate me with her unrestrained
spirits, her girlish, giddy, wild nonsense. She showed her ring
exultingly; she called herself Madame la Comtesse de Hamal, and asked
how it sounded, a score of times. I said very little. I gave her only
the crust and rind of my nature. No matter she expected of me nothing
better—she knew me too well to look for compliments—my dry gibes
pleased her well enough and the more impassible and prosaic my mien,
the more merrily she laughed.

Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded to leave the army as
the surest way of weaning him from certain unprofitable associates and
habits; a post of attaché was procured for him, and he and his young
wife went abroad. I thought she would forget me now, but she did not.
For many years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of
correspondence. During the first year or two, it was only of herself
and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself and
a certain, new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassompierre de
Hamal began to reign in his father’s stead. There were great boastings
about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon miracles of
precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against the phlegmatic
incredulity with which I received them. I didn’t know “what it was to
be a mother;” “unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the
maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me,” and so on. In due course
of nature this young gentleman took his degrees in teething, measles,
hooping-cough: that was a terrible time for me—the mamma’s letters
became a perfect shout of affliction; never woman was so put upon by
calamity: never human being stood in such need of sympathy. I was
frightened at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found out
there was more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed into my
natural cruel insensibility. As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered
each storm like a hero. Five times was that youth “in articulo mortis,”
and five times did he miraculously revive.

In the course of years there arose ominous murmurings against Alfred
the First; M. de Bassompierre had to be appealed to, debts had to be
paid, some of them of that dismal and dingy order called “debts of
honour;” ignoble plaints and difficulties became frequent. Under every
cloud, no matter what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out
lustily for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meeting any distress
single-handed. In some shape, from some quarter or other, she was
pretty sure to obtain her will, and so she got on—fighting the battle
of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering as little as any human
being I have ever known.