Villette

SIDORE.

My time was now well and profitably filled up. What with teaching
others and studying closely myself, I had hardly a spare moment. It was
pleasant. I felt I was getting on; not lying the stagnant prey of
mould and rust, but polishing my faculties and whetting them to a keen
edge with constant use. Experience of a certain kind lay before me, on
no narrow scale. Villette is a cosmopolitan city, and in this school
were girls of almost every European nation, and likewise of very varied
rank in life. Equality is much practised in Labassecour; though not
republican in form, it is nearly so in substance, and at the desks of
Madame Beck’s establishment the young countess and the young bourgeoise
sat side by side. Nor could you always by outward indications decide
which was noble and which plebeian; except that, indeed, the latter had
often franker and more courteous manners, while the former bore away
the bell for a delicately-balanced combination of insolence and deceit.
In the former there was often quick French blood mixed with the
marsh-phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this vivacious fluid
chiefly appeared in the oilier glibness with which flattery and fiction
ran from the tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, but quite
heartless and insincere.

To do all parties justice, the honest aboriginal Labassecouriennes had
an hypocrisy of their own, too; but it was of a coarse order, such as
could deceive few. Whenever a lie was necessary for their occasions,
they brought it out with a careless ease and breadth altogether
untroubled by the rebuke of conscience. Not a soul in Madame Beck’s
house, from the scullion to the directress herself, but was above being
ashamed of a lie; they thought nothing of it: to invent might not be
precisely a virtue, but it was the most venial of faults. “J’ai menti
plusieurs fois,” formed an item of every girl’s and woman’s monthly
confession: the priest heard unshocked, and absolved unreluctant. If
they had missed going to mass, or read a chapter of a novel, that was
another thing: these were crimes whereof rebuke and penance were the
unfailing weed.

While yet but half-conscious of this state of things, and unlearned in
its results, I got on in my new sphere very well. After the first few
difficult lessons, given amidst peril and on the edge of a moral
volcano that rumbled under my feet and sent sparks and hot fumes into
my eyes, the eruptive spirit seemed to subside, as far as I was
concerned. My mind was a good deal bent on success: I could not bear
the thought of being baffled by mere undisciplined disaffection and
wanton indocility, in this first attempt to get on in life. Many hours
of the night I used to lie awake, thinking what plan I had best adopt
to get a reliable hold on these mutineers, to bring this stiff-necked
tribe under permanent influence. In the first place, I saw plainly
that aid in no shape was to be expected from Madame: her righteous plan
was to maintain an unbroken popularity with the pupils, at any and
every cost of justice or comfort to the teachers. For a teacher to seek
her alliance in any crisis of insubordination was equivalent to
securing her own expulsion. In intercourse with her pupils, Madame only
took to herself what was pleasant, amiable, and recommendatory; rigidly
requiring of her lieutenants sufficiency for every annoying crisis,
where to act with adequate promptitude was to be unpopular. Thus, I
must look only to myself.

Imprimis—it was clear as the day that this swinish multitude were not
to be driven by force. They were to be humoured, borne with very
patiently: a courteous though sedate manner impressed them; a very rare
flash of raillery did good. Severe or continuous mental application
they could not, or would not, bear: heavy demand on the memory, the
reason, the attention, they rejected point-blank. Where an English girl
of not more than average capacity and docility would quietly take a
theme and bind herself to the task of comprehension and mastery, a
Labassecourienne would laugh in your face, and throw it back to you
with the phrase,—“Dieu, que c’est difficile! Je n’en veux pas. Cela
m’ennuie trop.”

A teacher who understood her business would take it back at once,
without hesitation, contest, or expostulation—proceed with even
exaggerated care to smoothe every difficulty, to reduce it to the level
of their understandings, return it to them thus modified, and lay on
the lash of sarcasm with unsparing hand. They would feel the sting,
perhaps wince a little under it; but they bore no malice against this
sort of attack, provided the sneer was not sour, but hearty, and
that it held well up to them, in a clear, light, and bold type, so that
she who ran might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. They
would riot for three additional lines to a lesson; but I never knew
them rebel against a wound given to their self-respect: the little they
had of that quality was trained to be crushed, and it rather liked the
pressure of a firm heel than otherwise.

By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and
could make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their
case, the elder and more intelligent girls began rather to like me in
their way: I noticed that whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in
her soul the stirring of worthy emulation, or the quickening of honest
shame, from that date she was won. If I could but once make their
(usually large) ears burn under their thick glossy hair, all was
comparatively well. By-and-by bouquets began to be laid on my desk in
the morning; by way of acknowledgment for this little foreign
attention, I used sometimes to walk with a select few during
recreation. In the course of conversation it befel once or twice that I
made an unpremeditated attempt to rectify some of their singularly
distorted notions of principle; especially I expressed my ideas of the
evil and baseness of a lie. In an unguarded moment, I chanced to say
that, of the two errors; I considered falsehood worse than an
occasional lapse in church-attendance. The poor girls were tutored to
report in Catholic ears whatever the Protestant teacher said. An
edifying consequence ensued. Something—an unseen, an indefinite, a
nameless—something stole between myself and these my best pupils: the
bouquets continued to be offered, but conversation thenceforth became
impracticable. As I paced the alleys or sat in the berceau, a girl
never came to my right hand but a teacher, as if by magic, appeared at
my left. Also, wonderful to relate, Madame’s shoes of silence brought
her continually to my back, as quick, as noiseless and unexpected, as
some wandering zephyr.

The opinion of my Catholic acquaintance concerning my spiritual
prospects was somewhat naïvely expressed to me on one occasion. A
pensionnaire, to whom I had rendered some little service, exclaimed one
day as she sat beside me: “Mademoiselle, what a pity you are a
Protestant!”

“Why, Isabelle?”

“Parceque, quand vous serez morte—vous brûlerez tout de suite dans
l’Enfer.”

“Croyez-vous?”

“Certainement que j’y crois: tout le monde le sait; et d’ailleurs le
prêtre me l’a dit.”

Isabelle was an odd, blunt little creature. She added, sotto voce:
“Pour assurer votre salut là-haut, on ferait bien de vous brûler toute
vive ici-bas.”

I laughed, as, indeed, it was impossible to do otherwise.

Has the reader forgotten Miss Ginevra Fanshawe? If so, I must be
allowed to re-introduce that young lady as a thriving pupil of Madame
Beck’s; for such she was. On her arrival in the Rue Fossette, two or
three days after my sudden settlement there, she encountered me with
very little surprise. She must have had good blood in her veins, for
never was any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly
nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the
sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the
same flimsy condition: her liking and disliking, her love and hate,
were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that
seemed strong and durable enough, and that was—her selfishness.

She was not proud; and—bonne d’enfants as I was—she would forthwith
have made of me a sort of friend and confidant. She teased me with a
thousand vapid complaints about school-quarrels and household economy:
the cookery was not to her taste; the people about her, teachers and
pupils, she held to be despicable, because they were foreigners. I bore
with her abuse of the Friday’s salt fish and hard eggs—with her
invective against the soup, the bread, the coffee—with some patience
for a time; but at last, wearied by iteration, I turned crusty, and put
her to rights: a thing I ought to have done in the very beginning, for
a salutary setting down always agreed with her.

Much longer had I to endure her demands on me in the way of work. Her
wardrobe, so far as concerned articles of external wear, was well and
elegantly supplied; but there were other habiliments not so carefully
provided: what she had, needed frequent repair. She hated
needle-drudgery herself, and she would bring her hose, &c. to me in
heaps, to be mended. A compliance of some weeks threatening to result
in the establishment of an intolerable bore—I at last distinctly told
her she must make up her mind to mend her own garments. She cried on
receiving this information, and accused me of having ceased to be her
friend; but I held by my decision, and let the hysterics pass as they
could.

Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others needless to
mention—but by no means of a refined or elevating character—how pretty
she was! How charming she looked, when she came down on a sunny Sunday
morning, well-dressed and well-humoured, robed in pale lilac silk, and
with her fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders. Sunday was a
holiday which she always passed with friends resident in town; and
amongst these friends she speedily gave me to understand was one who
would fain become something more. By glimpses and hints it was shown
me, and by the general buoyancy of her look and manner it was ere long
proved, that ardent admiration—perhaps genuine love—was at her command.
She called her suitor “Isidore:” this, however, she intimated was not
his real name, but one by which it pleased her to baptize him—his own,
she hinted, not being “very pretty.” Once, when she had been bragging
about the vehemence of “Isidore’s” attachment, I asked if she loved him
in return.

“Comme cela,” said she: “he is handsome, and he loves me to
distraction, so that I am well amused. Ca suffit.”

Finding that she carried the thing on longer than, from her very fickle
tastes, I had anticipated, I one day took it upon me to make serious
inquiries as to whether the gentleman was such as her parents, and
especially her uncle—on whom, it appeared, she was dependent—would be
likely to approve. She allowed that this was very doubtful, as she did
not believe “Isidore” had much money.

“Do you encourage him?” I asked.

“Furieusement sometimes,” said she.

“Without being certain that you will be permitted to marry him?”

“Oh, how dowdyish you are! I don’t want to be married. I am too young.”

“But if he loves you as much as you say, and yet it comes to nothing in
the end, he will be made miserable.”

“Of course he will break his heart. I should be shocked and,
disappointed if he didn’t.”

“I wonder whether this M. Isidore is a fool?” said I.

“He is, about me; but he is wise in other things, à ce qu’on dit. Mrs.
Cholmondeley considers him extremely clever: she says he will push his
way by his talents; all I know is, that he does little more than sigh
in my presence, and that I can wind him round my little finger.”

Wishing to get a more definite idea of this love-stricken M. Isidore;
whose position seemed to me of the least secure, I requested her to
favour me with a personal description; but she could not describe: she
had neither words nor the power of putting them together so as to make
graphic phrases. She even seemed not properly to have noticed him:
nothing of his looks, of the changes in his countenance, had touched
her heart or dwelt in her memory—that he was “beau, mais plutôt bel
homme que joli garçon,” was all she could assert. My patience would
often have failed, and my interest flagged, in listening to her, but
for one thing. All the hints she dropped, all the details she gave,
went unconsciously to prove, to my thinking, that M. Isidore’s homage
was offered with great delicacy and respect. I informed her very
plainly that I believed him much too good for her, and intimated with
equal plainness my impression that she was but a vain coquette. She
laughed, shook her curls from her eyes, and danced away as if I had
paid her a compliment.

Miss Ginevra’s school-studies were little better than nominal; there
were but three things she practised in earnest, viz. music, singing,
and dancing; also embroidering the fine cambric handkerchiefs which she
could not afford to buy ready worked: such mere trifles as lessons in
history, geography, grammar, and arithmetic, she left undone, or got
others to do for her. Very much of her time was spent in visiting.
Madame, aware that her stay at school was now limited to a certain
period, which would not be extended whether she made progress or not,
allowed her great licence in this particular. Mrs. Cholmondeley—her
chaperon—a gay, fashionable lady, invited her whenever she had
company at her own house, and sometimes took her to evening-parties at
the houses of her acquaintance. Ginevra perfectly approved this mode of
procedure: it had but one inconvenience; she was obliged to be well
dressed, and she had not money to buy variety of dresses. All her
thoughts turned on this difficulty; her whole soul was occupied with
expedients for effecting its solution. It was wonderful to witness the
activity of her otherwise indolent mind on this point, and to see the
much-daring intrepidity to which she was spurred by a sense of
necessity, and the wish to shine.

She begged boldly of Mrs. Cholmondeley—boldly, I say: not with an air
of reluctant shame, but in this strain:—

“My darling Mrs. C., I have nothing in the world fit to wear for your
party next week; you must give me a book-muslin dress, and then a
ceinture bleu celeste: do—there’s an angel! will you?”

The “darling Mrs. C.” yielded at first; but finding that applications
increased as they were complied with, she was soon obliged, like all
Miss Fanshawe’s friends, to oppose resistance to encroachment. After a
while I heard no more of Mrs. Cholmondeley’s presents; but still,
visiting went on, and the absolutely necessary dresses continued to be
supplied: also many little expensive etcetera—gloves, bouquets, even
trinkets. These things, contrary to her custom, and even nature—for she
was not secretive—were most sedulously kept out of sight for a time;
but one evening, when she was going to a large party for which
particular care and elegance of costume were demanded, she could not
resist coming to my chamber to show herself in all her splendour.

Beautiful she looked: so young, so fresh, and with a delicacy of skin
and flexibility of shape altogether English, and not found in the list
of continental female charms. Her dress was new, costly, and perfect. I
saw at a glance that it lacked none of those finishing details which
cost so much, and give to the general effect such an air of tasteful
completeness.

I viewed her from top to toe. She turned airily round that I might
survey her on all sides. Conscious of her charms, she was in her best
humour: her rather small blue eyes sparkled gleefully. She was going to
bestow on me a kiss, in her school-girl fashion of showing her delights
but I said, “Steady! Let us be Steady, and know what we are about, and
find out the meaning of our magnificence”—and so put her off at arm’s
length, to undergo cooler inspection.

“Shall I do?” was her question.

“Do?” said I. “There are different ways of doing; and, by my word, I
don’t understand yours.”

“But how do I look?”

“You look well dressed.”

She thought the praise not warm enough, and proceeded to direct
attention to the various decorative points of her attire. “Look at this
parure,” said she. “The brooch, the ear-rings, the bracelets: no one
in the school has such a set—not Madame herself.”

“I see them all.” (Pause.) “Did M. de Bassompierre give you those
jewels?”

“My uncle knows nothing about them.”

“Were they presents from Mrs. Cholmondeley?”

“Not they, indeed. Mrs. Cholmondeley is a mean, stingy creature; she
never gives me anything now.”

I did not choose to ask any further questions, but turned abruptly
away.

“Now, old Crusty—old Diogenes” (these were her familiar terms for me
when we disagreed), “what is the matter now?”

“Take yourself away. I have no pleasure in looking at you or your
parure.”

For an instant, she seemed taken by surprise.

“What now, Mother Wisdom? I have not got into debt for it—that is, not
for the jewels, nor the gloves, nor the bouquet. My dress is certainly
not paid for, but uncle de Bassompierre will pay it in the bill: he
never notices items, but just looks at the total; and he is so rich,
one need not care about a few guineas more or less.”

“Will you go? I want to shut the door…. Ginevra, people may tell you
you are very handsome in that ball-attire; but, in my eyes, you will
never look so pretty as you did in the gingham gown and plain straw
bonnet you wore when I first saw you.”

“Other people have not your puritanical tastes,” was her angry reply.
“And, besides, I see no right you have to sermonize me.”

“Certainly! I have little right; and you, perhaps, have still less to
come flourishing and fluttering into my chamber—a mere jay in borrowed
plumes. I have not the least respect for your feathers, Miss Fanshawe;
and especially the peacock’s eyes you call a parure: very pretty
things, if you had bought them with money which was your own, and which
you could well spare, but not at all pretty under present
circumstances.”

“On est là pour Mademoiselle Fanshawe!” was announced by the portress,
and away she tripped.

This semi-mystery of the parure was not solved till two or three days
afterwards, when she came to make a voluntary confession.

“You need not be sulky with me,” she began, “in the idea that I am
running somebody, papa or M. de Bassompierre, deeply into debt. I
assure you nothing remains unpaid for, but the few dresses I have
lately had: all the rest is settled.”

“There,” I thought, “lies the mystery; considering that they were not
given you by Mrs. Cholmondeley, and that your own means are limited to
a few shillings, of which I know you to be excessively careful.”

“Ecoutez!” she went on, drawing near and speaking in her most
confidential and coaxing tone; for my “sulkiness” was inconvenient to
her: she liked me to be in a talking and listening mood, even if I only
talked to chide and listened to rail. “Ecoutez, chère grogneuse! I will
tell you all how and about it; and you will then see, not only how
right the whole thing is, but how cleverly managed. In the first place,
I must go out. Papa himself said that he wished me to see something
of the world; he particularly remarked to Mrs. Cholmondeley, that,
though I was a sweet creature enough, I had rather a
bread-and-butter-eating, school-girl air; of which it was his special
desire that I should get rid, by an introduction to society here,
before I make my regular début in England. Well, then, if I go out, I
must dress. Mrs. Cholmondeley is turned shabby, and will give nothing
more; it would be too hard upon uncle to make him pay for all the
things I need: that you can’t deny—that agrees with your own
preachments. Well, but SOMEBODY who heard me (quite by chance, I assure
you) complaining to Mrs. Cholmondeley of my distressed circumstances,
and what straits I was put to for an ornament or two—somebody, far
from grudging one a present, was quite delighted at the idea of being
permitted to offer some trifle. You should have seen what a blanc-bec
he looked when he first spoke of it: how he hesitated and blushed, and
positively trembled from fear of a repulse.”

“That will do, Miss Fanshawe. I suppose I am to understand that M.
Isidore is the benefactor: that it is from him you have accepted that
costly parure; that he supplies your bouquets and your gloves?”

“You express yourself so disagreeably,” said she, “one hardly knows how
to answer; what I mean to say is, that I occasionally allow Isidore the
pleasure and honour of expressing his homage by the offer of a trifle.”

“It comes to the same thing…. Now, Ginevra, to speak the plain truth, I
don’t very well understand these matters; but I believe you are doing
very wrong—seriously wrong. Perhaps, however, you now feel certain that
you will be able to marry M. Isidore; your parents and uncle have given
their consent, and, for your part, you love him entirely?”

“Mais pas du tout!” (she always had recourse to French when about to
say something specially heartless and perverse). “Je suis sa reine,
mais il n’est pas mon roi.”

“Excuse me, I must believe this language is mere nonsense and coquetry.
There is nothing great about you, yet you are above profiting by the
good nature and purse of a man to whom you feel absolute indifference.
You love M. Isidore far more than you think, or will avow.”

“No. I danced with a young officer the other night, whom I love a
thousand times more than he. I often wonder why I feel so very cold to
Isidore, for everybody says he is handsome, and other ladies admire
him; but, somehow, he bores me: let me see now how it is….”

And she seemed to make an effort to reflect. In this I encouraged her.

“Yes!” I said, “try to get a clear idea of the state of your mind. To
me it seems in a great mess—chaotic as a rag-bag.”

“It is something in this fashion,” she cried out ere long: “the man is
too romantic and devoted, and he expects something more of me than I
find it convenient to be. He thinks I am perfect: furnished with all
sorts of sterling qualities and solid virtues, such as I never had, nor
intend to have. Now, one can’t help, in his presence, rather trying to
justify his good opinion; and it does so tire one to be goody, and to
talk sense,—for he really thinks I am sensible. I am far more at my
ease with you, old lady—you, you dear crosspatch—who take me at my
lowest, and know me to be coquettish, and ignorant, and flirting, and
fickle, and silly, and selfish, and all the other sweet things you and
I have agreed to be a part of my character.”

“This is all very well,” I said, making a strenuous effort to preserve
that gravity and severity which ran risk of being shaken by this
whimsical candour, “but it does not alter that wretched business of the
presents. Pack them up, Ginevra, like a good, honest girl, and send
them back.”

“Indeed, I won’t,” said she, stoutly.

“Then you are deceiving M. Isidore. It stands to reason that by
accepting his presents you give him to understand he will one day
receive an equivalent, in your regard…”

“But he won’t,” she interrupted: “he has his equivalent now, in the
pleasure of seeing me wear them—quite enough for him: he is only
bourgeois.”

This phrase, in its senseless arrogance, quite cured me of the
temporary weakness which had made me relax my tone and aspect. She
rattled on:

“My present business is to enjoy youth, and not to think of fettering
myself, by promise or vow, to this man or that. When first I saw
Isidore, I believed he would help me to enjoy it I believed he would be
content with my being a pretty girl; and that we should meet and part
and flutter about like two butterflies, and be happy. Lo, and behold! I
find him at times as grave as a judge, and deep-feeling and thoughtful.
Bah! Les penseurs, les hommes profonds et passionnés ne sont pas à mon
goût. Le Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far better. Va pour les beaux
fats et les jolis fripons! Vive les joies et les plaisirs! A bas les
grandes passions et les sévères vertus!”

She looked for an answer to this tirade. I gave none.

“J’aime mon beau Colonel,” she went on: “je n’aimerai jamais son rival.
Je ne serai jamais femme de bourgeois, moi!”

I now signified that it was imperatively necessary my apartment should
be relieved of the honour of her presence: she went away laughing.