Villette (23 page)

This evening, fugitive as usual before the Pope and his works, I mounted the staircase, approached the dormitory, and quietly opened the door which was always kept carefully shut, and which, like every other door in this house, revolved noiselessly on well-oiled hinges. Before I
saw,
I
felt
that life was in the great room, usually void: not that there was either stir or breath, or rustle of sound, but Vacuum lacked, Solitude was not at home. All the white beds—the ‘lits d’ange,’ as they were poetically termed—lay visible at a glance; all were empty: no sleeper reposed therein. The sound of a drawer cautiously slid out struck my ear; stepping a little to one side, my vision took a free range, unimpeded by falling curtains. I now commanded my own bed and my own toilet, with a locked work-box upon it, and locked drawers underneath.

Very good. A dumpy, motherly, little body, in decent shawl and the cleanest of possible nightcaps, stood before this toilet, hard at work, apparently doing me the kindness of ‘tidying out’ the ‘meuble’. Open stood the lid of the work-box, open the top drawer; duly and impartially was each succeeding drawer opened in turn: not an article of their contents but was lifted and unfolded, not a paper but was glanced over, not a little box but was unlidded; and beautiful was the adroitness, exemplary the care with which the search was accomplished. Madame wrought at it like a true star, ‘unhasting yet unresting.’ I will not deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been a gentleman, I believe madame would have found favour in my eyes, she was so handy, neat, thorough in all she did: some people’s movements provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, hers—satisfied by their trim compactness. I stood, in short, fascinated ; but it was necessary to make an effort to break this spell: a retreat must be beaten. The searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing for it then but a scene, and she and I would have had to come all at once, with a sudden clash, to a thorough knowledge of each other: down would have gone conventionalities, away—swept disguises, and
I
should have looked into her eyes, and
she
into mine—we should have known that we could work together no more, and parted in this life for ever.

Where was the use of tempting such a catastrophe? I was not angry, and had no wish in the world to leave her. I could hardly get another employer whose yoke would be so light and so easy of carriage; and truly, I liked madame for her capital sense, whatever I might think of her principles: as to her system, it did me no harm; she might work me with it to her heart’s content : nothing would come of the operation. Loverless and inexpectant of love, I was as safe from spies in my heart-poverty, as the beggar from thieves in his destitution of purse. I turned, then, and fled; descending the stairs with progress as swift and soundless as that of the spider, which at the same instant ran down the bannister.

How I laughed when I reached the school-room. I knew now she had certainly seen Dr. John in the garden; I knew what her thoughts were. The spectacle of a suspicious nature so far misled by its own inventions, tickled me much. Yet as the laugh died, a kind of wrath smote me, and then bitterness followed: it was the rock struck, and Meribah’s waters
^cd
gushing out. I never had felt so strange and contradictory an inward tumult as I felt for an hour that evening: soreness and laughter, and fire, and grief, shared my heart between them. I cried hot tears; not because madame mistrusted me—I did not care twopence for her mistrust—but for other reasons. Complicated, disquieting thoughts broke up the whole repose of my nature. However, that turmoil subsided: next day I was again Lucy Snowe.

On revisiting my drawers, I fould them all securely locked; the closest subsequent examination could not discover change or apparent disturbance in the position of one object. My few dresses were folded as I had left them; a certain little bunch of white violets that had once been silently presented to me by a stranger (a stranger to me, for we had never exchanged words), and which I had dried and kept for its sweet perfume between the folds of my best dress, lay there unstirred; my black silk scarf, my lace chemisettes and collars were unrumpled. Had she creased one solitary article, I own I should have felt much greater difficulty in forgiving her; but finding all straight and orderly, I said, ‘Let bygones be bygones. I am unharmed : why should I bear malice?’

A thing there was which puzzled myself, and I sought in my brain a key to that riddle almost as sedulously as madame had sought a guide to useful knowledge in my toilet drawers. How was it that Dr. John, if he had not been accessory to the dropping of that casket into the garden, should have known that it was dropped, and appeared so promptly on the spot to seek it? So strong was the wish to clear up this point that I began to entertain this daring suggestion:

‘Why may I not, in case I should ever have the opportunity, ask Dr. John himself to explain this coincidence?’

And so long as Dr. John was absent, I really believed I had courage to test him with such a question.

Little Georgette was now convalescent; and her physician accordingly made his visits very rare: indeed, he would have ceased them altogether, had not madame insisted on his giving an occasional call till the child should be quite well.

She came into the nursery one evening just after I had listened to Georgette’s lisped and broken prayer, and had put her to bed. Taking the little one’s hand, she said:

‘Cette enfant a toujours un peu de fièvre.’ And presently afterwards, looking at me with a quicker glance than was habitual to her quiet eye, ‘Le Docteur John l’a-t-il vue dernièrement? Non, n‘est ce pas?’
⁶

Of course, she knew this better than any other person in the house. ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘I am going out, pour faire quelques courses en fiacre. I shall call on Dr. John, and send him to the child. I will that he sees her this very evening; her cheeks are flushed, her pulse is quick:
you
will receive him—for my part, I shall be from home.’

Now the child was well enough, only warm with the warmth of July; it was scarcely less needful to send for a priest to administer extreme unction than for a doctor to prescribe a dose; also madame rarely made ‘courses’ as she called them, in the evening: moreover, this was the first time she had chosen to absent herself on the occasion of a visit from Dr. John. The whole arrangement indicated some plan; this I saw, but without the least anxiety. ‘Ha! ha! madame,’ laughed Light-heart the Beggar, ‘your crafty wits are on the wrong tack.’

She departed, attired very smartly in a shawl of price, and a certain
chapeau vert tendre
^ce
—hazardous, as to its tint, for any complexion less fresh than her own, but, to her, not unbecoming. I wondered what she intended: whether she really would send Dr. John or not; or whether indeed he would come: he might be engaged.

Madame had charged me not to let Georgette sleep till the doctor came; I had therefore sufficient occupation in telling her nursery tales and palavering the little language for her benefit. I affected Georgette; she was a sensitive and a loving child: to hold her in my lap, or carry her in my arms was to me a treat. To-night she would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the nestling action with which she pressed her cheek to mine, made me almost cry with a tender pain. Feeling of no kind abounded in that house; this pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart, and sent a gush to the eyes.

Half an hour or an hour passed; Georgette murmured in her soft lisp that she was growing sleepy. ‘And you
shall
sleep,’ thought I, ‘malgré maman and médecin, if they are not here in ten minutes.’

Hark! There was the ring, and there the tread, astonishing the staircase by the fleetness with which it left the steps behind. Rosine introduced Dr. John, and, with a freedom of manner not altogether peculiar to herself, but characteristic of the domestics of Villette generally, she stayed to hear what he had to say. Madame’s presence would have awed her back to her own realm of the vestibule and the cabinet—for mine, or that of any other teacher or pupil, she cared not a jot. Smart, trim and pert, she stood, a hand in each pocket of her gay grisette apron, eyeing Dr. John with no more fear or shyness than if he had been a picture instead of a living gentleman.

‘Le marmot n’a rien n‘est ce pas?’ she said, indicating Georgette with a jerk of her chin.

‘Pas beaucoup,’
^cf
was the answer, as the doctor hastily scribbled with his pencil some harmless prescription.

‘Eh bien!’ pursued Rosine, approaching him quite near, while he put up his pencil. ‘And the box—did you get it? Monsieur went off like a coup de vent the other night; I had not time to ask him.’

‘I found it: yes.’

‘And who threw it then?’ continued Rosine, speaking quite freely the very words I should so much have wished to say, but had no address or courage to bring it out: how short some people make the road to a point which, for others, seems unattainable !

‘That may be my secret,’ rejoined Dr. John briefly, but with no sort of hauteur: he seemed quite to understand the Rosine or grisette character.

‘Mais enfin,’ continued she, nothing abashed, ‘monsieur knew it was thrown, since he came to seek it—how did he know?’

‘I was attending a little patient in the college near,’ said he, ‘and saw it dropped out of his chamber window, and so came to pick it up.’

How simple the whole explanation! The note had alluded to a physician as then examining ‘Gustave.’

‘Ah ça!’ pursued Rosine, ‘Il n’y a donc rien là-dessous: pas de mystère, pas d‘amourette, par exemple?’

‘Pas plus que sur ma main,’ responded the doctor, showing his palm.

‘Quel dommage!’ responded the grisette: ‘et moi—à qui tout cela commencait à donner des idées.’

‘Vraiment! vous en êtes pour vos frais,’
^cg
was the doctor’s cool rejoinder.

She pouted. The doctor could not help laughing at the sort of ‘moue’ she made: when he laughed, he had something peculiarly good-natured and genial in his look. I saw his hand incline to his pocket.

‘How many times have you opened the door for me within this last month?’ he asked.

‘Monsieur ought to have kept count of that,’ said Rosine, quite readily.

‘As if I had not something better to do!’ rejoined he; but I saw him give her a piece of gold, which she took unscrupulously, and then danced off to answer the door-bell, ringing just now every five minutes, as the various servants came to fetch the half-boarders.

The reader must not think too hardly of Rosine; on the whole, she was not a bad sort of person, and had no idea there could be any disgrace in grasping at whatever she could get, or any effrontery in chattering like a pie to the best gentleman in Christendom.

I had learnt something from the above scene besides what concerned the ivory box: viz., that not on the robe de jaconas, pink or gray, nor yet on the frilled and pocketed apron, lay the blame of breaking Dr. John’s heart: these items of array were obviously guiltless as Georgette’s little blue tunic. So much the better. But who then was the culprit? What was the ground—what the origin—what the perfect explanation of the whole business? Some points had been cleared, but how many yet remained obscure as night?

‘However,’ I said to myself, ‘it is no affair of yours;’ and turning from the face on which I had been unconsciously dwelling with a questioning gaze, I looked through the window which commanded the garden below. Dr. John, meantime, standing by the bed-side, was slowly drawing on his gloves and watching his little patient, as her eyes closed and her rosy lips parted in coming sleep. I waited till he should depart as usual, with a quick bow and scarce articulate ‘good night.’ Just as he took his hat, my eyes, fixed on the tall houses bounding the garden, saw the one lattice, already commemorated, cautiously open; forth from the aperture projected a hand and a white handkerchief; both waved. I know not whether the signal was answered from some viewless quarter of our own dwelling; but immediately after there fluttered from the lattice a falling object, white and light—billet the second, of course.

‘There!’ I ejaculated involuntarily.

‘Where?’ asked Dr. John with energy, making direct for the window. ‘What is it?’

‘They have gone and done it again,’ was my reply. ‘A handkerchief waved and something fell:’ and I pointed to the lattice, now closed and looking hypocritically blank.

‘Go at once; pick it up and bring it here,’ was his prompt direction; adding, ‘nobody will take notice of
you: I
should be seen.

Straight I went. After some little search, I found a folded paper, lodged on the lower branch of a shrub; I seized and brought it direct to Dr. John. This time, I believe not even Rosine saw me.