Villette (58 page)

Breakfast being over and mass attended, the school-bell rung and the rooms filled: a very pretty spectacle was presented in classe. Pupils and teachers sat neatly arrayed, orderly, and expectant, each bearing in her hand the bouquet of felicitation—the prettiest spring-flowers all fresh, and filling the air with their fragrance: I only had no bouquet. I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St. Pierre marked my empty hands—she could not believe I had been so remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of violets, something to win to myself praise for taste, commendation for ingenuity. The unimaginative ‘Anglaise’ proved better than the Parisienne’s fears: she sat literally unprovided, as bare of bloom or leaf as the winter tree. This ascertained, Zélie smiled well pleased.

‘How wisely you have acted to keep your money, Miss Lucie,’ she said: ‘silly I have gone and thrown away two francs on a bouquet of hot-house flowers!’

And she showed with pride her splendid nosegay.

But hush! a step:
the
step. It came prompt, as usual, but with a promptitude, we felt disposed to flatter ourselves, inspired by other feelings than mere excitability of nerve, and vehemence of intent. We thought our professor’s ‘foot-fall’ (to speak romantically) had in it a friendly promise this morning; and so it had.

He entered in a mood which made him as good as a new sunbeam to the already well-lit first-classe. The morning light, playing amongst our plants and laughing on our walls, caught an added lustre from M. Paul’s all-benignant salute. Like a true Frenchman (though I don’t know why I should say so, for he was of strain neither French nor Labassecourien), he had dressed for the ‘situation’ and the occasion. Not by the vague folds, sinister and conspirator-like, of his soot-dark paletot were the outlines of his person obscured; on the contrary, his figure (such as it was, I don’t boast of it) was well set off by a civilized coat and a silken vest quite pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet-grec had vanished: bare-headed he came upon us, carrying a Christian hat in his gloved hand. The little man looked well, very well; there was a clearness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good feeling on his dark complexion, which passed perfectly in the place of beauty: one really did not care to observe that his nose, though far from small, was of no particular shape, his cheek thin, his brow marked and square, his mouth no rosebud: one accepted him as he was, and felt his presence the reverse of damping or insignificant.

He passed to his desk; he placed on the same his hat and gloves. ‘Bon jour, mes amies,’ said he, in a tone that somehow made amends to some amongst us for many a sharp snap and savage snarl: not a jocund, good-fellow tone, still less an unctuous priestly accent, but a voice he had belonging to himself—a voice used when his heart passed the word to his lips. That same heart
did
speak sometimes; though an irritable, it was not an ossified organ: in its core was a place, tender beyond a man’s tenderness; a place that humbled him to little children, that bound him to girls and women; to whom, rebel as he would, he could not disown his affinity, nor quite deny that, on the whole, he was better with them than with his own sex.

‘We all wish Monsieur a good-day, and present to him our congratulations on the anniversary of his fête,’ said Mademoiselle Zélie, constituting herself spokeswoman of the assembly; and advancing with no more twists of affectation than with her were indispensible to the achievement of motion, she laid her costly bouquet before him. He bowed over it.

The long train of offerings followed: all the pupils, sweeping past with the gliding step foreigners practise, left their tributes as they went by. Each girl so dexterously adjusted her separate gift that, when the last bouquet was laid on the desk, it formed the apex to a blooming pyramid—a pyramid blooming, spreading, and towering with such exuberance as, in the end, to eclipse the hero behind it. This ceremony over, seats were resumed, and we sat in dead silence, expectant of a speech.

I suppose five minutes might have elapsed, and the hush remained unbroken; ten—and there was no sound.

Many present began, doubtless, to wonder for what Monsieur waited: as well they might. Voiceless and viewless, stirless and wordless, he kept his station behind the pile of flowers.

At last there issued forth a voice, rather deep, as if it spoke out of a hollow:—

‘Est-ce là tout?’
^gm

Mademoiselle Zélie looked round.

‘You have all presented your bouquets?’ inquired she of the pupils.

Yes; they had all given their nosegays from the eldest to the youngest, from the tallest to the most diminutive. The senior mistress signified as much.

‘Est-ce là tout?’ was reiterated in an intonation which, deep before, had now descended some notes lower.

‘Monsieur,’ said Mademoiselle St. Pierre, rising and this time speaking with her own sweet smile, ‘I have the honour to tell you that, with a single exception, every person in classe has offered her bouquet. For Meess Lucie, Monsieur will kindly make allowance; as a foreigner, she probably did not know our customs, or did not appreciate their significance. Meess Lucie has regarded this ceremony as too frivolous to be honoured by her observance.’

‘Famous!’ I muttered between my teeth; ‘you are no bad speaker, Zélie, when you begin.’

The answer vouchsafed to Mademoiselle St. Pierre from the estrade, was given in the gesticulation of a hand from behind the pyramid. This manual action seemed to deprecate words, to enjoin silence.

A form, ere long, followed the hand. Monsieur emerged from his eclipse; and producing himself upon the front of his estrade, and gazing straight and fixedly before him at a vast ‘mappemonde’
^gn
covering the wall opposite, he demanded a third time, and now in really tragic tones—

‘Est-ce là tout?’

I might yet have made all right, by stepping forwards and slipping into his hand the ruddy little shell-box I, at that moment, held tight in my own. It was what I had fully purposed to do; but, first, the comic side of Monsieur’s behaviour had tempted me to delay, and now, Mademoiselle St. Pierre’s affected interference provoked contumacity. The reader not having hitherto had any cause to ascribe to Miss Snowe’s character the most distant pretension to perfection, will be scarcely surprised to learn that she felt too perverse to defend herself from any imputation the Parisienne might choose to insinuate: and besides, M. Paul was so tragic, and took my defection so seriously, he deserved to be vexed. I kept, then, both my box and my countenance, and sat insensate as any stone.

‘It is well!’ dropped at length from the lips of M. Paul; and having uttered this phrase, the shadow of some great paroxysm—the swell of wrath, scorn, resolve—passed over his brow, rippled his lips, and lined his cheeks. Gulping down all further comment, he launched into his customary ‘discours.’

I can’t at all remember what this ‘discours’ was; I did not listen to it: the gulping-down process, the abrupt dismissal of his mortification or vexation, had given me a sensation which half-counteracted the ludicrous effect of the reiterated ’Est-ce là tout?’

Towards the close of the speech there came a pleasing diversion; my attention was again amusingly arrested.

Owing to some little accidental movement—I think I dropped my thimble on the floor, and in stooping to regain it, hit the crown of my head against the sharp corner of my desk; which casualties (exasperating to me, by rights, if to anybody) naturally made a slight bustle—M. Paul became irritated, and dismissing his forced equanimity, and casting to the winds that dignity and self-control with which he never cared long to encumber himself, he broke forth into the strain best calculated to give him ease.

I don’t know how, in the progress of his ‘discours,’ he had contrived to cross the channel, and land on British ground; but there I found him when I began to listen.

Casting a quick, cynical glance round the room—a glance which scathed, or was intended to scathe, as it crossed me—he fell with fury upon ‘les Anglaises.’

Never have I heard English women handled as M. Paul that morning handled them: he spared nothing—neither their minds, morals, manners, nor personal appearance. I specially remember his abuse of their tall stature, their long necks, their thin arms, their slovenly dress, their pedantic education, their impious scepticism(!), their insufferable pride, their pretentious virtue; over which he ground his teeth malignantly, and looked as if, had he dared, he would have said singular things. Oh! he was spiteful, acrid, savage; and, as a natural consequence, detestably ugly.

‘Little wicked venomous man!’ thought I; ‘am I going to harass myself with fears of displeasing
you,
or hurting
your
feelings? No, indeed; you shall be indifferent to me, as the shabbiest bouquet in your pyramid.’

I grieve to say I could not quite carry out this resolution. For some time the abuse of England and the English found and left me stolid: I bore it some fifteen minutes stoically enough; but this hissing cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said such things at last—fastening not only upon our women, but upon our greatest names and best men; sullying the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the union-jack in mud—that I
was
stung. With vicious relish he brought up the most spicy current continental historical falsehoods—than which nothing can be conceived more offensive. Zélie, and the whole class, became one grin of vindictive delight; for it is curious to discover how these clowns of Labassecour secretly hate England. At last, I struck a sharp stroke on my desk, opened my lips, and let loose this cry:—

‘Vive l’Angleterre, l‘Histoire et les Héros! A bas la France, la Fiction et les Faquins!’
^go

The class was struck of a heap. I suppose they thought me mad. The professor put up his handkerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its folds. Little monster of malice! He now thought he had got the victory, since he had made me angry. In a second he became good-humoured. With great blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers; talked poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, perfume, purity, etcetera; made Frenchified comparisons between the ‘jeunes filles’ and the sweet blossoms before him; paid Mademoiselle St. Pierre a very full-blown compliment on the superiority of her bouquet; and ended by announcing that the first really, fine, mild, and balmy morning in spring, he intended to take the whole class out to breakfast in the country. ‘Such of the class, at least,’ he added, with emphasis, ‘as he could count amongst the number of his friends.’

‘Donc je n’y serai pas,’ declared I, involuntarily.

‘Soit!’
^gp
was his response, and, gathering his flowers in his arms, he flashed out of classe; while I, consigning my work, scissors, thimble, and the neglected little box, to my desk, swept up-stairs. I don’t know whether
he
felt hot and angry, but I am free to confess that
I
did.

Yet with a strange evanescent anger, I had not sat an hour on the edge of my bed, picturing and repicturing his look, manner, words, ere I smiled at the whole scene. A little pang of regret I underwent that the box had not been offered. I had meant to gratify him. Fate would not have it so.

In the course of the afternoon, remembering that desks in classe were by no means inviolate repositories, and thinking that it was as well to secure the box, on account of the initials in the lid, P. C. D. E., for Paul Carl (or Carlos) David Emanuel—such was his full name—these foreigners must always have a string of baptismals—I descended to the school-room.

It slept in holiday repose. The day-pupils were all gone home, the boarders were out walking, the teachers, except the surveillante of the week, were in town, visiting or shopping; the suite of divisions was vacant; so was the grande salle, with its huge solemn globe hanging in the midst, its pair of many-branched chandeliers, and its horizontal grand piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. I rather wondered to find the first classe door ajar; this room being usually locked when empty, and being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck and myself, who possessed a duplicate key. I wondered still more, on approaching, to hear a vague movement as of life—a step, a chair stirred, a sound like the opening of a desk.

‘It is only Madame Beck doing inspection duty,’ was the conclusion following a moment’s reflection. The partially-opened door gave opportunity for assurance on this point. I looked. Behold! not the inspecting garb of Madame Beck—the shawl and clean cap—but the coat, and the close-shorn, dark head of a man. This person occupied my chair; his olive hand held my

Now I knew, and had long known, that that hand of M. Emanuel’s was on intimate terms with my desk; that it raised and lowered the lid, ransacked and arranged the contents, almost as familiarly as my own. The fact was not dubious, nor did he wish it to be so: he left signs of each visit palpable and unmistakeable; hitherto, however, I had never caught him in the act: watch as I would, I could not detect the hours and moments of his coming. I saw the brownie’s work, in exercises left overnight full of faults, and found next morning carefully corrected: I profited by his capricious goodwill in loans full welcome and refreshing. Between a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a classic, mellow and sweet in its ripe age. Out of my work-basket would laughingly peep a romance, under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, whence last evening’s reading had been extracted. Impossible to doubt the source whence these treasures flowed: had there been no other indication, one condemning and traitor peculiarity common to them all, settled the question—
they smelt of cigars.
This was very shocking, of course:
I
thought so at first, and used to open the window with some bustle, to air my desk, and with fastidious finger and thumb, to hold the peccant brochures forth to the purifying breeze. I was cured of that formality suddenly. Monsieur caught me at it one day, understood the inference, instantly relieved my hand of its burden, and, in another moment, would have thrust the same into the glowing stove. It chanced to be a book, on the perusal of which I was bent; so for once I proved as decided and quicker than himself, recaptured the spoil, and—having saved this volume—never hazarded a second. With all this, I had never yet been able to arrest in his visits the freakish, friendly, cigar-loving phantom.