Villette

CHAPTER XV.

THE LONG VACATION.

Following Madame Beck's fete, with its three preceding weeks ofrelaxation, its brief twelve hours' burst of hilarity and dissipation,and its one subsequent day of utter languor, came a period of reaction;two months of real application, of close, hard study. These two months,being the last of the ”annee scolaire,” were indeed the only genuineworking months in the year. To them was procrastinated--into themconcentrated, alike by professors, mistresses, and pupils--the mainburden of preparation for the examinations preceding the distributionof prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in good earnest;masters and teachers had to set their shoulders to the wheel, to urgeon the backward, and diligently aid and train the more promising. Ashowy demonstration--a telling exhibition--must be got up for publicview, and all means were fair to this end.

I scarcely noted how the other teachers went to work; I had my ownbusiness to mind; and _my_ task was not the least onerous, being toimbue some ninety sets of brains with a due tincture of what theyconsidered a most complicated and difficult science, that of theEnglish language; and to drill ninety tongues in what, for them, was analmost impossible pronunciation--the lisping and hissing dentals of theIsles.

The examination-day arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care,dressed for with silent despatch--nothing vaporous or flutteringnow--no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact wasthe order of the toilette. It seemed to me that I was this day,especially doomed--the main burden and trial falling on me alone of allthe female teachers. The others were not expected to examine in thestudies they taught; the professor of literature, M. Paul, taking uponhimself this duty. He, this school autocrat, gathered all and sundryreins into the hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected anycolleague; he would not have help. Madame herself, who evidently ratherwished to undertake the examination in geography--her favourite study,which she taught well--was forced to succumb, and be subordinate to herdespotic kinsman's direction. The whole staff of instructors, male andfemale, he set aside, and stood on the examiner's estrade alone. Itirked him that he was forced to make one exception to this rule. Hecould not manage English: he was obliged to leave that branch ofeducation in the English teacher's hands; which he did, not without aflash of naive jealousy.

A constant crusade against the ”amour-propre” of every human being buthimself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping littleman. He had a strong relish for public representation in his ownperson, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. Hequelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he fumedlike a bottled storm.

On the evening preceding the examination-day, I was walking in thegarden, as were the other teachers and all the boarders. M. Emanueljoined me in the ”allee defendue;” his cigar was at his lips; hispaletot--a most characteristic garment of no particular shape--hungdark and menacing; the tassel of his bonnet grec sternly shadowed hisleft temple; his black whiskers curled like those of a wrathful cat;his blue eye had a cloud in its glitter.

”Ainsi,” he began, abruptly fronting and arresting me, ”vous alleztroner comme une reine; demain--troner a mes cotes? Sans doute voussavourez d'avance les delices de l'autorite. Je crois voir en je nesais quoi de rayonnante, petite ambitieuse!”

Now the fact was, he happened to be entirely mistaken. I did not--couldnot--estimate the admiration or the good opinion of tomorrow's audienceat the same rate he did. Had that audience numbered as many personalfriends and acquaintance for me as for him, I know not how it mighthave been: I speak of the case as it stood. On me school-triumphs shedbut a cold lustre. I had wondered--and I wondered now--how it was thatfor him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth and hearth-glow._He_ cared for them perhaps too much; _I_, probably, too little.However, I had my own fancies as well as he. I liked, for instance, tosee M. Emanuel jealous; it lit up his nature, and woke his spirit; itthrew all sorts of queer lights and shadows over his dun face, and intohis violet-azure eyes (he used to say that his black hair and blue eyeswere ”une de ses beautes”). There was a relish in his anger; it wasartless, earnest, quite unreasonable, but never hypocritical. I utteredno disclaimer then of the complacency he attributed to me; I merelyasked where the English examination came in--whether at thecommencement or close of the day?

”I hesitate,” said he, ”whether at the very beginning, before manypersons are come, and when your aspiring nature will not be gratifiedby a large audience, or quite at the close, when everybody is tired,and only a jaded and worn-out attention will be at your service.”

”Que vous etes dur, Monsieur!” I said, affecting dejection.

”One ought to be 'dur' with you. You are one of those beings who mustbe _kept down_. I know you! I know you! Other people in this house seeyou pass, and think that a colourless shadow has gone by. As for me, Iscrutinized your face once, and it sufficed.”

”You are satisfied that you understand me?”

Without answering directly, he went on, ”Were you not gratified whenyou succeeded in that vaudeville? I watched you and saw a passionateardour for triumph in your physiognomy. What fire shot into the glance!Not mere light, but flame: je me tiens pour averti.”

”What feeling I had on that occasion, Monsieur--and pardon me, if Isay, you immensely exaggerate both its quality and quantity--was quiteabstract. I did not care for the vaudeville. I hated the part youassigned me. I had not the slightest sympathy with the audience belowthe stage. They are good people, doubtless, but do I know them? Arethey anything to me? Can I care for being brought before their viewagain to-morrow? Will the examination be anything but a task to me--atask I wish well over?”

”Shall I take it out of your hands?”

”With all my heart; if you do not fear failure.”

”But I should fail. I only know three phrases of English, and a fewwords: par exemple, de sonn, de mone, de stares--est-ce bien dit? Myopinion is that it would be better to give up the thing altogether: tohave no English examination, eh?”

”If Madame consents, I consent.”

”Heartily?”

”Very heartily.”

He smoked his cigar in silence. He turned suddenly.

”Donnez-moi la main,” said he, and the spite and jealousy melted out ofhis face, and a generous kindliness shone there instead.

”Come, we will not be rivals, we will be friends,” he pursued. ”Theexamination shall take place, and I will choose a good moment; andinstead of vexing and hindering, as I felt half-inclined ten minutesago--for I have my malevolent moods: I always had from childhood--Iwill aid you sincerely. After all, you are solitary and a stranger, andhave your way to make and your bread to earn; it may be well that youshould become known. We will be friends: do you agree?”

”Out of my heart, Monsieur. I am glad of a friend. I like that betterthan a triumph.”

”Pauvrette?” said he, and turned away and left the alley.

The examination passed over well; M. Paul was as good as his word, anddid his best to make my part easy. The next day came the distributionof prizes; that also passed; the school broke up; the pupils went home,and now began the long vacation.

That vacation! Shall I ever forget it? I think not. Madame Beck went,the first day of the holidays, to join her children at the sea-side;all the three teachers had parents or friends with whom they tookrefuge; every professor quitted the city; some went to Paris, some toBoue-Marine; M. Paul set forth on a pilgrimage to Rome; the house wasleft quite empty, but for me, a servant, and a poor deformed andimbecile pupil, a sort of cretin, whom her stepmother in a distantprovince would not allow to return home.

My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords.How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless! How vastand void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the forsakengarden--grey now with the dust of a town summer departed. Lookingforward at the commencement of those eight weeks, I hardly knew how Iwas to live to the end. My spirits had long been gradually sinking; nowthat the prop of employment was withdrawn, they went down fast. Even tolook forward was not to hope: the dumb future spoke no comfort, offeredno promise, gave no inducement to bear present evil in reliance onfuture good. A sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed onme--a despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all thingsearthly. Alas! When I had full leisure to look on life as life must belooked on by such as me, I found it but a hopeless desert: tawny sands,with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in view. The hopes whichare dear to youth, which bear it up and lead it on, I knew not anddared not know. If they knocked at my heart sometimes, an inhospitablebar to admission must be inwardly drawn. When they turned away thusrejected, tears sad enough sometimes flowed: but it could not behelped: I dared not give such guests lodging. So mortally did I fearthe sin and weakness of presumption.

Religious reader, you will preach to me a long sermon about what I havejust written, and so will you, moralist: and you, stern sage: you,stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh. Well, eachand all, take it your own way. I accept the sermon, frown, sneer, andlaugh; perhaps you are all right: and perhaps, circumstanced like me,you would have been, like me, wrong. The first month was, indeed, along, black, heavy month to me.

The cretin did not seem unhappy. I did my best to feed her well andkeep her warm, and she only asked food and sunshine, or when thatlacked, fire. Her weak faculties approved of inertion: her brain, hereyes, her ears, her heart slept content; they could not wake to work,so lethargy was their Paradise.

Three weeks of that vacation were hot, fair, and dry, but the fourthand fifth were tempestuous and wet. I do not know why that change inthe atmosphere made a cruel impression on me, why the raging storm andbeating rain crushed me with a deadlier paralysis than I hadexperienced while the air had remained serene; but so it was; and mynervous system could hardly support what it had for many days andnights to undergo in that huge empty house. How I used to pray toHeaven for consolation and support! With what dread force theconviction would grasp me that Fate was my permanent foe, never to beconciliated. I did not, in my heart, arraign the mercy or justice ofGod for this; I concluded it to be a part of his great plan that somemust deeply suffer while they live, and I thrilled in the certaintythat of this number, I was one.

It was some relief when an aunt of the cretin, a kind old woman, cameone day, and took away my strange, deformed companion. The haplesscreature had been at times a heavy charge; I could not take her outbeyond the garden, and I could not leave her a minute alone: for herpoor mind, like her body, was warped: its propensity was to evil. Avague bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence, made constant vigilanceindispensable. As she very rarely spoke, and would sit for hourstogether moping and mowing, and distorting her features withindescribable grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with somestrange tameless animal, than associating with a human being. Thenthere were personal attentions to be rendered which required the nerveof a hospital nurse; my resolution was so tried, it sometimes felldead-sick. These duties should not have fallen on me; a servant, nowabsent, had rendered them hitherto, and in the hurry of holidaydeparture, no substitute to fill this office had been provided. Thistax and trial were by no means the least I have known in life. Still,menial and distasteful as they were, my mental pain was far morewasting and wearing. Attendance on the cretin deprived me often of thepower and inclination to swallow a meal, and sent me faint to the freshair, and the well or fountain in the court; but this duty never wrungmy heart, or brimmed my eyes, or scalded my cheek with tears hot asmolten metal.

The cretin being gone, I was free to walk out. At first I lackedcourage to venture very far from the Rue Fossette, but by degrees Isought the city gates, and passed them, and then went wandering awayfar along chaussees, through fields, beyond cemeteries, Catholic andProtestant, beyond farmsteads, to lanes and little woods, and I knownot where. A goad thrust me on, a fever forbade me to rest; a want ofcompanionship maintained in my soul the cravings of a most deadlyfamine. I often walked all day, through the burning noon and the aridafternoon, and the dusk evening, and came back with moonrise.

While wandering in solitude, I would sometimes picture the presentprobable position of others, my acquaintance. There was Madame Beck ata cheerful watering-place with her children, her mother, and a wholetroop of friends who had sought the same scene of relaxation. Zelie St.Pierre was at Paris, with her relatives; the other teachers were attheir homes. There was Ginevra Fanshawe, whom certain of herconnections had carried on a pleasant tour southward. Ginevra seemed tome the happiest. She was on the route of beautiful scenery; theseSeptember suns shone for her on fertile plains, where harvest andvintage matured under their mellow beam. These gold and crystal moonsrose on her vision over blue horizons waved in mounted lines.

But all this was nothing; I too felt those autumn suns and saw thoseharvest moons, and I almost wished to be covered in with earth andturf, deep out of their influence; for I could not live in their light,nor make them comrades, nor yield them affection. But Ginevra had akind of spirit with her, empowered to give constant strength andcomfort, to gladden daylight and embalm darkness; the best of the goodgenii that guard humanity curtained her with his wings, and canopiedher head with his bending form. By True Love was Ginevra followed:never could she be alone. Was she insensible to this presence? Itseemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imaginedher grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one dayto show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half consciousof her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceivedan electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutualunderstanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundredleagues--carrying, across mound and hollow, communication by prayer andwish. Ginevra gradually became with me a sort of heroine. One day,perceiving this growing illusion, I said, ”I really believe my nervesare getting overstretched: my mind has suffered somewhat too much amalady is growing upon it--what shall I do? How shall I keep well?”

Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last aday and night of peculiarly agonizing depression were succeeded byphysical illness, I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indiansummer closed and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark andwet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf,dishevelled--bewildered with sounding hurricane--I lay in a strangefever of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise inthe night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. Arattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied---Sleep nevercame!

I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity shebrought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste,that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, butsufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer anameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the verytone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night acup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well,but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering,brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips,tastes not as this suffering tasted. Having drank and woke, I thoughtall was over: the end come and past by. Trembling fearfully--asconsciousness returned--ready to cry out on some fellow-creature tohelp me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near enough to catchthe wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic could not hear--I roseon my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me: indescribably wasI torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the horrors of that dreamI think the worst lay here. Methought the well-loved dead, who hadloved _me_ well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated: galled was myinmost spirit with an unutterable sense of despair about the future.Motive there was none why I should try to recover or wish to live; andyet quite unendurable was the pitiless and haughty voice in which Deathchallenged me to engage his unknown terrors. When I tried to pray Icould only utter these words: ”From my youth up Thy terrors have Isuffered with a troubled mind.”

Most true was it.

On bringing me my tea next morning Goton urged me to call in a doctor.I would not: I thought no doctor could cure me.

One evening--and I was not delirious: I was in my sane mind, I gotup--I dressed myself, weak and shaking. The solitude and the stillnessof the long dormitory could not be borne any longer; the ghastly whitebeds were turning into spectres--the coronal of each became adeath's-head, huge and sun-bleached--dead dreams of an elder world andmightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That eveningmore firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fatewas of stone, and Hope a false idol--blind, bloodless, and of granitecore. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining itsclimax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, tremblingas they were. It rained still, and blew; but with more clemency, Ithought, than it had poured and raged all day. Twilight was falling,and I deemed its influence pitiful; from the lattice I saw comingnight-clouds trailing low like banners drooping. It seemed to me thatat this hour there was affection and sorrow in Heaven above for allpain suffered on earth beneath; the weight of my dreadful dream becamealleviated--that insufferable thought of being no more loved--no moreowned, half-yielded to hope of the contrary--I was sure this hope wouldshine clearer if I got out from under this house-roof, which wascrushing as the slab of a tomb, and went outside the city to a certainquiet hill, a long way distant in the fields. Covered with a cloak (Icould not be delirious, for I had sense and recollection to put on warmclothing), forth I set. The bells of a church arrested me in passing;they seemed to call me in to the _salut_, and I went in. Any solemnrite, any spectacle of sincere worship, any opening for appeal to Godwas as welcome to me then as bread to one in extremity of want. I kneltdown with others on the stone pavement. It was an old solemn church,its pervading gloom not gilded but purpled by light shed throughstained glass.

Few worshippers were assembled, and, the _salut_ over, half of themdeparted. I discovered soon that those left remained to confess. I didnot stir. Carefully every door of the church was shut; a holy quietsank upon, and a solemn shade gathered about us. After a space,breathless and spent in prayer, a penitent approached the confessional.I watched. She whispered her avowal; her shrift was whispered back; shereturned consoled. Another went, and another. A pale lady, kneelingnear me, said in a low, kind voice:--”Go you now, I am not quiteprepared.”

Mechanically obedient, I rose and went. I knew what I was about; mymind had run over the intent with lightning-speed. To take this stepcould not make me more wretched than I was; it might soothe me.

The priest within the confessional never turned his eyes to regard me;he only quietly inclined his ear to my lips. He might be a good man,but this duty had become to him a sort of form: he went through it withthe phlegm of custom. I hesitated; of the formula of confession I wasignorant: instead of commencing, then, with the prelude usual, Isaid:--”Mon pere, je suis Protestante.”

He directly turned. He was not a native priest: of that class, the castof physiognomy is, almost invariably, grovelling: I saw by his profileand brow he was a Frenchman; though grey and advanced in years, he didnot, I think, lack feeling or intelligence. He inquired, not unkindly,why, being a Protestant, I came to him?

I said I was perishing for a word of advice or an accent of comfort. Ihad been living for some weeks quite alone; I had been ill; I had apressure of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly any longerendure the weight.

”Was it a sin, a crime?” he inquired, somewhat startled. I reassuredhim on this point, and, as well as I could, I showed him the mereoutline of my experience.

He looked thoughtful, surprised, puzzled. ”You take me unawares,” saidhe. ”I have not had such a case as yours before: ordinarily we know ourroutine, and are prepared; but this makes a great break in the commoncourse of confession. I am hardly furnished with counsel fitting thecircumstances.”

Of course, I had not expected he would be; but the mere relief ofcommunication in an ear which was human and sentient, yetconsecrated--the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating,long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not be againdiffused--had done me good. I was already solaced.

”Must I go, father?” I asked of him as he sat silent.

”My daughter,” he said kindly--and I am sure he was a kind man: he hada compassionate eye--”for the present you had better go: but I assureyou your words have struck me. Confession, like other things, is apt tobecome formal and trivial with habit. You have come and poured yourheart out; a thing seldom done. I would fain think your case over, andtake it with me to my oratory. Were you of our faith I should know whatto say--a mind so tossed can find repose but in the bosom of retreat,and the punctual practice of piety. The world, it is well known, has nosatisfaction for that class of natures. Holy men have bidden penitentslike you to hasten their path upward by penance, self-denial, anddifficult good works. Tears are given them here for meat anddrink--bread of affliction and waters of affliction--their recompencecomes hereafter. It is my own conviction that these impressions underwhich you are smarting are messengers from God to bring you back to thetrue Church. You were made for our faith: depend upon it our faithalone could heal and help you--Protestantism is altogether too dry,cold, prosaic for you. The further I look into this matter, the moreplainly I see it is entirely out of the common order of things. On noaccount would I lose sight of you. Go, my daughter, for the present;but return to me again.”

I rose and thanked him. I was withdrawing when he signed me to return.

”You must not come to this church,” said he: ”I see you are ill, andthis church is too cold; you must come to my house: I live----” (and hegave me his address). ”Be there to-morrow morning at ten.”

In reply to this appointment, I only bowed; and pulling down my veil,and gathering round me my cloak, I glided away.

Did I, do you suppose, reader, contemplate venturing again within thatworthy priest's reach? As soon should I have thought of walking into aBabylonish furnace. That priest had arms which could influence me: hewas naturally kind, with a sentimental French kindness, to whosesoftness I knew myself not wholly impervious. Without respecting somesorts of affection, there was hardly any sort having a fibre of root inreality, which I could rely on my force wholly to withstand. Had I goneto him, he would have shown me all that was tender, and comforting, andgentle, in the honest Popish superstition. Then he would have tried tokindle, blow and stir up in me the zeal of good works. I know not howit would all have ended. We all think ourselves strong in some points;we all know ourselves weak in many; the probabilities are that had Ivisited Numero 10, Rue des Mages, at the hour and day appointed, Imight just now, instead of writing this heretic narrative, be countingmy beads in the cell of a certain Carmelite convent on the Boulevard ofCrecy, in Villette. There was something of Fenelon about that benignold priest; and whatever most of his brethren may be, and whatever Imay think of his Church and creed (and I like neither), of himself Imust ever retain a grateful recollection. He was kind when I neededkindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!

Twilight had passed into night, and the lamps were lit in the streetsere I issued from that sombre church. To turn back was now becomepossible to me; the wild longing to breathe this October wind on thelittle hill far without the city walls had ceased to be an imperativeimpulse, and was softened into a wish with which Reason could cope: sheput it down, and I turned, as I thought, to the Rue Fossette. But I hadbecome involved in a part of the city with which I was not familiar; itwas the old part, and full of narrow streets of picturesque, ancient,and mouldering houses. I was much too weak to be very collected, and Iwas still too careless of my own welfare and safety to be cautious; Igrew embarrassed; I got immeshed in a network of turns unknown. I waslost and had no resolution to ask guidance of any passenger.

If the storm had lulled a little at sunset, it made up now for losttime. Strong and horizontal thundered the current of the wind fromnorth-west to south-east; it brought rain like spray, and sometimes asharp hail, like shot: it was cold and pierced me to the vitals. I bentmy head to meet it, but it beat me back. My heart did not fail at allin this conflict; I only wished that I had wings and could ascend thegale, spread and repose my pinions on its strength, career in itscourse, sweep where it swept. While wishing this, I suddenly feltcolder where before I was cold, and more powerless where before I wasweak. I tried to reach the porch of a great building near, but the massof frontage and the giant spire turned black and vanished from my eyes.Instead of sinking on the steps as I intended, I seemed to pitchheadlong down an abyss. I remember no more.