Villette (57 page)

‘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’
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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!
^fz
There! there I went—vive comme la poudre!‘
^ga
He was sorry—he was very sorry: for my sake he grieved over the hapless peculiarity. This ‘emportement,’
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this ‘chaleur’
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—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 ‘conquette,’ 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,’
^gd
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 his 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,”
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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.” ’
^gf
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,”
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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 or 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,”
^gh
and its hue “gris de poussière.” ’
^gi

‘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!’
^gj
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 savon,” 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 overgravity 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.’

I
was up the next morning an hour before daybreak, and finished my guard, kneeling on the dormitory floor beside the centre stand, for the benefit of such expiring glimmer as the night-lamp afforded in its last watch.

All my materials—my whole stock of beads and silk—were used up before the chain assumed the length and richness I wished; I had wrought it double, as I knew, by the rule of contraries, that to suit the particular taste whose gratification was in view, an effective appearance was quite indispensable. As a finish to the ornament, a little gold clasp was needed; fortunately I possessed it in the fastening of my sole necklace; I duly detached and re-attached it, then coiled compactly the completed guard, and enclosed it in a small box I had bought for its brilliancy, made of some tropic shell of the colour called ‘nacarat,’ and decked with a little coronal of sparkling blue stones. Within the lid of the box, I carefully graved with my scissors’ point certain initials.

The reader will, perhaps, remember the description of Madame Beck’s fête; nor will he have forgotten that at each anniversary, a handsome present was subscribed for and offered by the school. The observance of this day was a distinction accorded to none but Madame, and, in a modified form, to her kinsman and counsellor, M. Emanuel. In the latter case it was an honour spontaneously awarded, not plotted and contrived beforehand, and offered an additional proof, amongst many others, of the estimation in which—despite his partialities, prejudices, and irritabilities—the professor of literature was held by his pupils. No article of value was offered to him: he distinctly gave it to be understood, that he would accept neither plate nor jewellery. Yet he liked a slight tribute; the cost, the money-value, did not touch him: a diamond ring, a gold snuff-box, presented with pomp, would have pleased him less than a flower, or a drawing, offered simply and with sincere feelings. Such was his nature. He was a man, not wise in his generation, yet could he claim a filial sympathy with ‘the dayspring on high.’

M. Paul’s fête fell on the first of March and a Thursday. It proved a fine sunny day, and being likewise the morning on which it was customary to attend mass; being also otherwise distinguished by the half holiday which permitted the privilege of walking out, shopping, or paying visits in the afternoon: these combined considerations induced a general smartness and freshness of dress. Clean collars were in vogue; the ordinary dingy woollen classe-dress was exchanged for something lighter and clearer. Mademoiselle Zélie St. Pierre, on this particular Thursday, even assumed a ‘robe de soie,’
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deemed in economical Labassecour an article of hazardous splendour and luxury; nay, it was remarked that she sent for a ‘coiffeur’ to dress her hair that morning; there were pupils acute enough to discover that she had bedewed her handkerchief and her hands with a new and fashionable perfume. Poor Zélie! It was much her wont to declare about this time, that she was tired to death of a life of seclusion and labour; that she longed to have the means and leisure for relaxation; to have some one to work for her—a husband who would pay her debts (she was wofully encumbered with debt), supply her wardrobe, and leave her at liberty, as she said, to ‘goûter un peu les plaisirs.’
^gl
It had long been rumoured, that her eye was upon M. Emanuel. Monsieur Emanuel’s eye was certainly often upon her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for minutes together. I have seen him give her a quarter of an hour’s gaze, while the class was silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied. Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it, half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations, sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under florid veilings the bare, barren places of the spirit: yes, and its perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and women would not have known—the twisted spine, the mal-formed limb that was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have perhaps brought on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. Emanuel could pity and forgive, if it were acknowledged candidly; but where his questioning eyes met dishonest denial—where his ruthless researches found deceitful concealment—oh, then, he could be cruel, and I thought wicked! he could exultantly snatch the screen from poor shrinking wretches, passionately hurry them to the summit of the mount of exposure, and there show them all naked, all false—poor living lies—the spawn of that horrid Truth which cannot be looked on unveiled. He thought he did justice; for my part I doubt whether man has a right to do such justice on man: more than once in these visitations, I have felt compelled to give tears to his victims, and not spared ire and keen reproach to himself. He deserved it; but it was difficult to shake him in his firm conviction that the work was righteous and needed.