Villette (28 page)

‘There is no draught, Dr. John,’ said I turning.

‘She takes cold so easily,’ he pursued, looking at Ginevra with extreme kindness. ‘She is delicate; she must be cared for: fetch her a shawl.’

‘Permit me to judge for myself,’ said Miss Fanshawe, with hauteur. ‘I want no shawl.’

‘Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated.’

‘Always preaching,’ retorted she; ‘always coddling and admonishing.’

The answer Dr. John would have given, did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient. I knew where there were plenty of shawls near at hand; I ran and fetched one.

‘She shall wear this if I have strength to make her,’ said I, folding it well round her muslin dress, covering carefully her neck and her arms. ‘Is that Isidore?’ I asked, in a somewhat fierce whisper.

She pushed up her lip, smiled, and nodded.

‘Is
that
Isidore?’ I repeated, giving her a shake: I could have given her a dozen.

‘C’est lui-même,’ said she. ‘How coarse he is, compared with the Colonel-Count! And then—oh, ciel!
^df
—the whiskers!’

Dr. John now passed on.

‘The Colonel-Count!’ I echoed. ‘The doll—the puppet—the manikin—the poor inferior creature! A mere lackey for Dr. John: his valet, his foot-boy! Is it possible that fine generous gentleman—handsome as a vision—offers you his honourable hand and gallant heart, and promises to protect your flimsy person and wretchless mind through the storms and struggles of life—and you hang back—you scorn, you sting, you torture him! Have you power to do this? Who gave you that power? Where is it? Does it lie all in your beauty—your pink and white complexion and your yellow hair? Does this bind his soul at your feet, and bend his neck under your yoke? Does this purchase for you his affection, his tenderness, his thoughts, his hopes, his interest, his noble, cordial love—and will you not have it? Do you scorn it? You are only dissembling: you are not in earnest; you love him; you long for him; but you trifle with his heart to make him more surely yours?’

‘Bah! How you run on! I don’t understand half you have said.’

I had got her out into the garden ere this. I now set her down on a seat and told her she should not stir till she had avowed which she meant in the end to accept—the man or the monkey.

‘Him you call the man,’ said she, ‘is bourgeois, sandy-haired, and answers to the name of John!—cela suffit: je n’en veux pas.
^dg
Colonel de Hamal is a gentleman of excellent connections, perfect manners, sweet appearance, with pale interesting face, and hair and eyes like an Italian. Then too he is the most delightful company possible—a man quite in my way; not sensible and serious like the other, but one with whom I can talk on equal terms—who does not plague, and bore, and harass me with depths, and heights, and passions, and talents for which I have no taste. There now. Don’t hold me so fast.’

I slackened my grasp, and she darted off. I did not care to pursue her.

Somehow I could not avoid returning once more in the direction of the corridor to get another glimpse of Dr. John; but I met him on the garden-steps, standing where the light from a window fell broad. His well-proportioned figure was not to be mistaken, for I doubt whether there was another in that assemblage his equal. He carried his hat in his hand; his uncovered head, his face and fine brow were most handsome and manly.
His
features were not delicate, not slight like those of a woman, nor were they cold, frivolous, and feeble; though well cut, they were not so chiselled, so frittered away, as to lose in power and significance what they gained in unmeaning symmetry. Much feeling spoke in them at times, and more sat silent in his eye. Such at least were my thoughts of him: to me he seemed all this. An inexpressible sense of wonder occupied me as I looked at this man, and reflected that
he
could be slighted.

It was not my intention to approach or address him in the garden, our terms of acquaintance not warranting such a step; I had only meant to view him in the crowd—myself unseen: coming upon him thus alone, I withdrew. But he was looking out for me, or rather for her who had been with me; therefore he descended the steps, and followed me down the alley.

‘You know Miss Fanshawe? I have often wished to ask whether you knew her,’ said he.

‘Yes: I know her.’

‘Intimately?’

‘Quite as intimately as I wish.’

‘What have you done with her now?’

‘Am I her keeper?’ I felt inclined to ask; but I simply answered, ‘I have shaken her well, and would have shaken her better, but she escaped out of my hands and ran away.’

‘Would you favour me,’ he asked, ‘by watching over her this one evening, and observing that she does nothing imprudent—does not, for instance, run out into the night-air immediately after dancing?’

‘I may, perhaps, look after her a little, since you wish it; but she likes her own way too well to submit readily to control.’

‘She is so young, so thoroughly artless,’ said he.

‘To me she is an enigma,’ I responded.

‘Is she?’ he asked—much interested. ‘How?’

‘It would be difficult to say how—difficult, at least, to tell
you
how.’

‘And why me?’

‘I wonder she is not better pleased that you are so much her friend.’

‘But she has not the slightest idea how much I
am
her friend. That is precisely the point I cannot teach her. May I inquire did she ever speak of me to you?’

‘Under the name of “Isidore” she has talked about you often; but I must add that it is only within the last ten minutes I have discovered that you and “Isidore” are identical. It is only, Dr. John, within that brief space of time I have learned that Ginevra Fanshawe is the person, under this roof, in whom you have long been interested—that she is the magnet which attracts you to the Rue Fossette, that for her sake you venture into this garden, and seek out caskets dropped by rivals.’

‘You know all?’

‘I know so much.’

‘For more than a year I have been accustomed to meet her in society. Mrs. Cholmondeley, her friend, is an acquaintance of mine; thus I see her every Sunday. But you observed that under the name of “Isidore” she often spoke of me: may I—without inviting you to a breach of confidence—inquire what was the tone, what the feeling of her remarks? I feel somewhat anxious to know, being a little tormented with uncertainty as to how I stand with her.’

‘Oh, she varies: she shifts and changes like the wind.’

‘Still, you can gather some general idea—?’

‘I can,’ thought I, ‘but it would not do to communicate that general idea to you. Besides, if I said she did not love you, I know you would not believe me.’

‘You are silent,’ he pursued. ‘I suppose you have no good news to impart. No matter. If she feels for me positive coldness and aversion, it is a sign I do not deserve her.’

‘Do you doubt yourself? Do you consider yourself the inferior of Colonel de Hamal?’

‘I love Miss Fanshawe far more than de Hamal loves any human being, and would care for and guard her better than he. Respecting de Hamal, I fear she is under an illusion; the man’s character is known to me, all his antecedents, all his scrapes. He is not worthy of your beautiful young friend.’

‘My “beautiful young friend” ought to know that, and to know or feel who is worthy of her,’ said I. ‘If her beauty or her brains will not serve her so far, she merits the sharp lesson of experience.’

‘Are you not a little severe?’

‘I am excessively severe—more severe than I choose to show you. You should hear the strictures with which I favour my “beautiful young friend,” only that you would be unutterably shocked at my want of tender considerateness for her delicate nature.’

‘She is so lovely, one cannot but be loving towards her. You—every woman older than herself, must feel for such a simple, innocent, girlish fairy, a sort of motherly or elder-sisterly fondness. Graceful angel! Does not your heart yearn towards her when she pours into your ear her pure, child-like confidences ? How you are privileged!’ And he sighed.

‘I cut short these confidences somewhat abruptly now and then,’ said I. ‘But excuse me, Dr. John, may I change the theme for one instant? What a god-like person is that de Hamal! What a nose on his face—perfect! Model one in putty or clay, you could not make a better, or straighter, or neater; and then, such classic lips and chin—and his bearing—sublime.’

‘De Hamal is an unutterable puppy, besides being a very white-livered hero.’

‘You, Dr. John, and every man of a less refined mould than he, must feel for him a sort of admiring affection, such as Mars and the coarser deities may be supposed to have borne the young, graceful Apollo.’

‘An unprincipled, gambling, little jackanapes!’ said Dr. John curtly, ‘whom, with one hand, I could lift up by the waistband any day, and lay low in the kennel, if I liked.’

‘The sweet seraph!’ said I. ‘What a cruel idea? Are you not a little severe, Dr. John?’

And now I paused. For the second time that night I was going beyond myself—venturing out of what I looked on as my natural habits—speaking in an unpremeditated, impulsive strain, which startled me strangely when I halted to reflect. On rising that morning, had I anticipated that before night I should have acted the part of a gay lover in a vaudeville; and an hour after, frankly discussed with Dr. John the question of his hapless suit, and rallied him on his illusions? I had no more presaged such feats than I had looked forward to an ascent in a balloon, or a voyage to Cape Horn.

The Doctor and I, having paced down the walk, were now returning; the reflex from the window again lit his face: he smiled, but his eye was melancholy. How I wished that he could feel heart‘s-ease! How I grieved that he brooded over pain, and pain from such a cause! He, with his great advantages,
he
to love in vain! I did not then know that the pensiveness of reverse is the best phase for some minds; nor did I reflect that some herbs, ‘though scentless when entire, yield fragrance when they’re bruised.’

‘Do not be sorrowful, do not grieve,’ I broke out. ‘If there is in Ginevra one spark of worthiness of your affection, she will—she
must
feel devotion in return. Be cheerful, be hopeful, Dr. John. Who should hope, if not you?’

In return for this speech I got—what, it must be supposed, I deserved—a look of some surprise: I thought also of some disapprobation. We parted, and I went into the house very chill. The clocks struck and the bells tolled midnight; people were leaving fast: the fete was over; the lamps were fading. In another hour all the dwelling-house, and all the Pensionnat, were dark and hushed. I too was in bed, but not asleep. To me it was not easy to sleep after a day of such excitement.

F
ollowing Madame Beck’s fête, with its three preceding weeks of relaxation, 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 ‘année scolaire,’ were indeed the only genuine working months in the year. To them was procrastinated—into them concentrated, alike by professors, mistresses, and pupils—the main burden of preparation for the examinations preceding the distribution of prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in good earnest; masters and teachers had to set their shoulders to the wheel, to urge on the backward, and diligently aid and train the more promising. A showy demonstration—a telling exhibition—must be got up for public view, and all means were fair to this end.

I scarcely noted how the other teachers went to work; I had my own business to mind: and my task was not the least onerous, being to embue some ninety sets of brains with a due tincture of what they considered a most complicated and difficult science, that of the English language; and to drill ninety tongues in what, for them, was an almost impossible pronunciation—the lisping and hissing dentals of the isles.

The examination-day arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care, dressed for with silent despatch—nothing vaporous or fluttering now—no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was the 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 all the female teachers. The others were not expected to examine in the studies they taught; the professor of literature, M. Paul, taking upon himself this duty. He, this school-autocrat, gathered all and sundry reins into the hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected any colleague; he would not have help. Madame herself, who evidently rather wished to undertake the examination in geography—her favourite study, which she taught well—was forced to succumb, and be subordinate to her despotic kinsman’s direction. The whole staff of instructors, male and female, he set aside, and stood on the examiner’s estrade alone. It irked him that he was forced to make one exception to this rule. He could not manage English: he was obliged to leave that branch of education in the English teacher’s hands; which he did, not without a flash of naive jealousy.

A constant crusade against the ‘amour-propre’ of every human-being, but himself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping little man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He quelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he fumed like a bottled storm.

On the evening preceding the examination-day, I was walking in the garden, as were the other teachers and all the boarders. M. Emanuel joined me in the ‘allée défendue’; his cigar was at his lips; his paletôt—a most characteristic garment of no particular shape—hung dark and menacing; the tassel of his bonnet grec sternly shadowed his left temple; his black whiskers curled like those of a wrathful cat; his blue eye had a cloud in its glitter.