Villette (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Charlotte Bronte

‘As little of your cruelty.’

  ‘Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not have tormented a being inoffensive as a shadow.’

  I smiled; but I also hushed a groan. Oh!—I wished he would just let me alone—cease allusion to me. These epithets—these attributes I put from me. His ‘quiet Lucy Snowe,’ his ‘inoffensive shadow,’ I gave him back; not with scorn, but with extreme weariness: theirs was the coldness and the pressure of lead; let him whelm me with no such weight. Happily, he was soon on another theme.

  ‘On what terms were “little Polly” and I? Unless my recollections deceive me, we were not foes—’

  ‘You speak very vaguely. Do you think little Polly’s memory not more definite?’

  ‘Oh! we don’t talk of “little Polly” now. Pray say, Miss de Bassompierre; and, of course, such a stately personage remembers nothing of Bretton. Look at her large eyes, Lucy; can they read a word in the page of memory? Are they the same which I used to direct to a horn-book? She does not know that I partly taught her to read.’

  ‘In the Bible on Sunday nights?’

  ‘She has a calm, delicate, rather fine profile now: once what a little restless, anxious countenance was hers! What a thing is a child’s preference—what a bubble! Would you believe it? that lady was fond of me!’

  ‘I think she was in some measure fond of you,’ said I, moderately.

  ‘You don’t remember then? I had forgotten; but I remember now. She liked me the best of whatever there was at Bretton.’

  ‘You thought so.’

  ‘I quite well recall it. I wish I could tell her all I recall; or rather, I wish some one, you for instance, would go behind and whisper it all in her ear, and I could have the delight—here, as I sit—of watching her look under the intelligence. Could you manage that, think you, Lucy, and make me ever grateful?’

  ‘Could I manage to make you ever grateful?’ said I. ‘No, I could not.’ And I felt my fingers work and my hands interlock: I felt, too, an inward courage, warm and resistant. In this matter I was not disposed to gratify Dr. John: not at all. With now welcome force, I realized his entire misapprehension of my character and nature. He wanted always to give me a role not mine. Nature and I opposed him. He did not at all guess what I felt: he did not read my eyes, or face, or gestures; though, I doubt not, all spoke. Leaning towards me coaxingly, he said, softly, ‘Do content me, Lucy.’

  And I would have contented, or, at least, I would clearly have enlightened him, and taught him well never again to expect of me the part of officious soubrette in a love drama; when, following his soft, eager murmur, meeting almost his pleading, mellow—‘Do content me, Lucy!’—a sharp hiss pierced my ear on the other side.

  ‘Petite chatte, doucerette, coquette!’ sibillated the sudden boa-constrictor; ‘vous avez l’air bien triste, soumise, rêveuse, mais vous ne l‘êtes pas; c’est moi qui vous le dis: Sauvage! la flamme à l‘âme, l’éclair aux yeux!’

  ‘Oui; j’ai la flamme à l‘âme, et je dois l’avoir!’fj retorted I, turning in just wrath; but Professor Emanuel had hissed his insult and was gone.

  The worst of the matter was, that Dr. Bretton, whose ears, as I have said, were quick and fine, caught every word of this apostrophe; he put his handkerchief to his face and laughed till he shook.

  ‘Well done, Lucy,’ cried he; ‘capital! petite chatte, petite coquette! Oh, I must tell my mother! Is it true, Lucy, or half-true? I believe it is: you redden to the colour of Miss Fanshawe’s gown. And really, by my word, now I examine him, that is the same little man who was so savage with you at the concert: the very same, and in his soul he is frantic at this moment because he sees me laughing. Oh! I must tease him.’

  And Graham, yielding to his bent for mischief, laughed, jested, and whispered on till I could bear no more, and my eyes filled.

  Suddenly he was sobered: a vacant space appeared near Miss de Bassompierre; the circle surrounding her seemed about to dissolve. This movement was instantly caught by Graham’s eye-ever-vigilant, even while laughing; he rose, took his courage in both hands, crossed the room, and made the advantage his own. Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck—a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. How well he looked at this very moment! When Paulina looked up as he reached her side, her glance mingled at once with an encountering glance, animated, yet modest; his colour, as he spoke to her, became half a blush, half a glow. He stood in her presence brave and bashful: subdued and unobtrusive, yet decided in his purpose and devoted in his ardour. I gathered all this by one view. I did not prolong my observation—time failed me, had inclination served: the night wore late; Ginevra and I ought already to have been in the Rue Fossette. I rose, and bade good-night to my godmother and M. de Bassompierre.

  I know not whether Professor Emanuel had noticed my reluctant acceptance of Dr. Bretton’s badinage, or whether he perceived that I was pained, and that, on the whole, the evening had not been one flow of exultant enjoyment for the volatile, pleasure-loving, Mademoiselle Lucy; but, as I was leaving the room, he stepped up and inquired whether I had any one to attend me to the Rue Fossette. The professor now spoke politely, and even deferentially, and he looked apologetic and repentant; but I could not recognize his civility at a word, nor meet his contrition with crude, premature oblivion. Never hitherto had I felt seriously disposed to resent his brusqueries, or freeze before his fierceness; what he had said to-night, however, I considered unwarranted: my extreme disapprobation of the proceeding must be marked, however slightly. I merely said:—

  ‘I am provided with attendance.’

  Which was true, as Ginevra and I were to be sent home in the carriage; and I passed him with the sliding obeisance with which he was wont to be saluted in classe by pupils crossing his estrade.

  Having sought my shawl I returned to the vestibule. M. Emanuel stood there as if waiting. He observed that the night was fine.

  ‘Is it?’ I said, with a tone and manner whose consummate chariness and frostiness I could not but applaud. It was so seldom I could properly act out my own resolution to be reserved and cool where I had been grieved or hurt, that I felt almost proud of this one successful effort. That ‘Is it?’ sounded just like the manner of other people. I had heard hundreds of such little minced, docked, dry phrases, from the pursed-up coral lips of a score of self-possessed, self-sufficing misses and mesdemoiselles. That M. Paul would not stand any prolonged experience of this sort of dialogue I knew; but he certainly merited a sample of the curt and arid, I believe he thought so himself, for he took the dose quietly. He looked at my shawl and objected to its lightness. I decidedly told him it was as heavy as I wished. Receding aloof, and standing apart, I leaned on the banister of the stairs, folded my shawl about me, and fixed my eyes on a dreary religious painting darkening the wall.

  Ginevra was long in coming: tedious seemed her loitering. M. Paul was still there, my ear expected from his lips an angry tone. He came nearer. ‘Now for another hiss!’ thought I: had not the action been too uncivil I could have stopped my ears with my fingers in terror of the thrill. Nothing happens as we expect: listen for a coo or a murmur; it is then you will hear a cry of prey or pain. Await a piercing shriek, an angry threat, and welcome an amicable greeting, a low kind whisper. M. Paul spoke gently:—

  ‘Friends,’ said he, ‘do not quarrel for a word. Tell me, was it I or ce grand fat d’Anglais’ (so he profanely denominated Dr. Bretton), ‘who made your eyes so humid, and your cheeks so hot as they are even now?’

  ‘I am not conscious of you, monsieur, or of any other having excited such emotion as you indicate,’ was my answer; and in giving it, I again surpassed my usual self, and achieved a neat, frosty falsehood.

  ‘But what did I say?’ he pursued, ‘tell me: I was angry: I have forgotten my words; what were they.’

 
; ‘Such as it is best to forget!’ said I, still quite calm and chill.

  ‘Then it was my words which wounded you? Consider them unsaid: permit my retractation; accord my pardon.’

  ‘I am not angry, monsieur.’

  ‘Then you are worse than angry—grieved. Forgive me, Miss Lucy.’

  ’M. Emanuel, I do forgive you.’

  ‘Let me hear you say, in the voice natural to you, and not in that alien tone, “Mon ami, je vous pardonne.” ’

  He made me smile. Who could help smiling at his wistfulness, his simplicity, his earnestness?

  ‘Bon!’ he cried; ‘Voilà que le jour va poindre! Dites donc, mon ami.’fk

  ‘Monsieur Paul, je vous pardonne.’

  ‘I will have no monsieur: speak the other word, or I shall not believe you sincere: another effort—mon ami, or else in English, —my friend!’

  Now, ‘my friend’ had rather another sound and significancy than ‘mon ami,’ it did not breathe the same sense of domestic nd intimate affection:‘‘mon ami’ I could not say to M. Paul; ‘my friend,’ I could, and did say without difficulty. This distinction existed not for him, however, and he was quite satisfied with the English phrase. He smiled. You should have seen him smile, reader; and you should have marked the difference between his countenance now, and that he wore half an hour ago. I cannot affirm that I had ever witnessed the smile of pleasure, or content, or kindness round M. Paul’s lips, or in his eyes before. The ironic, the sarcastic, the disdainful, the passionately exultant, I had hundreds of times seen him express by what he called a smile, but any illuminated sign of milder or warmer feeling struck me as wholly new in his visage. It changed it as from a mask to a face: the deep lines left his features; the very complexion seemed clearer and fresher; that swart, sallow, southern darkness which spoke his Spanish blood, became displaced by a lighter hue. I know not that I have ever seen in any other human face an equal metamorphosis from a similar cause. He now took me to the carriage; at the same moment M. de Bassompierre came out with his niece.

  In a pretty humour was Mistress Fanshawe; she had found the evening a grand failure: completely upset as to temper, she gave way to the most uncontrolled moroseness as soon as we were seated, and the carriage door closed. Her invectives against Dr. Bretton had something venomous in them. Having found herself impotent either to charm or sting him, hatred was her only resource; and this hatred she expressed in terms so unmeasured and proportion so monstrous, that, after listening for a while with assumed stoicism, my outraged sense of justice at last and suddenly caught fire. An explosion ensued: for I could be passionate, too; especially with my present fair but faulty associate, who never failed to stir the worst dregs of me. It was well that the carriage-wheels made a tremendous rattle over the flinty Choseville pavement, for I can assure the reader there was neither dead silence nor calm discussion within the vehicle. Half in earnest, half in seeming, I made it my business to storm down Ginevra. She had set out rampant from the Rue Crécy; it was necessary to tame her before we reached the Rue Fossette: to this end it was indispensable to show up her sterling value and high deserts; and this must be done in language of which the fidelity and homeliness might challenge comparison with the compliments of a John Knox to a Mary Stuart.fl This was the right discipline for Ginevra; it suited her. I am quite sure she went to bed that night all the better and more settled in mind and mood, and slept all the more sweetly for having undergone a sound moral drubbing.

  VOLUME THREE

  CHAPTER 28

  The 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 salon, the salle à manger, or some other pianostation—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 momently 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 so 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.

  The Watchguard

  ‘Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!’ cried she. ‘Que vais je devenir? Monsieur va me tuer, je suis sure; car il est d’une colère!’fm

  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 premiere qui ouvrira cette porte, ou passera par cette division, sera pen-due—fut-ce Madame Beck elle même!’fn

  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!“fo

  ‘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 hi
s 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?’fp 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;’ fq 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.