Villette (82 page)

We walked back to the Rue Fossette by moonlight—such moonlight as fell on Eden—shining through the shades of the Great Garden, and haply gilding a path glorious, for a step divine—a Presence nameless. Once in their lives some men and women go back to these first fresh days of our great Sire and Mother—taste that grand morning’s dew—bathe in its sunrise.

In the course of the walk I was told how Justine Marie Sauveur had always been regarded with the affection proper to a daughter—how, with M. Paul’s consent, she had been affianced for months to one Heinrich Mühler, a wealthy young German merchant, and was to be married in the course of a year. Some of M. Emanuel’s relations and connections would, indeed, it seems, have liked him to marry her, with a view to securing her fortune in the family; but to himself the scheme was repugnant, and the idea totally inadmissible.

We reached Madame Beck’s door. Jean Baptiste’s clock tolled nine. At this hour, in this house, eighteen months since, had this man at my side, bent before me, looked into my face and eyes, and arbitered my destiny. This very evening he had again stooped, gazed and decreed. How different the look—how far otherwise the fate!

He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to have spread over me its beam like a banner. Once—unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his influence, and living by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by heart—I preferred him before all humanity.

We parted: he gave me his pledge, and then his farewell. We parted: the next day—he sailed.

M
an cannot prophecy. Love is no oracle. Fear sometimes imagines a vain thing. Those years of absence! How had I sickened over their anticipation! The woe they must bring seemed certain as death. I knew the nature of their course: I never had doubt how it would harrow as it went. The Juggernaut on his car towered there a grim load. Seeing him draw nigh, burying his broad wheels in the oppressed soil—I, the prostrate votary—felt beforehand the annihilating craunch.

Strange to say—strange, yet true, and owning many parallels in life’s experience—that anticipatory craunch proved all—yes—nearly
all
the torture. The great Juggernaut, in his great chariot, drew on lofty, loud, and sullen. He passed quietly, like a shadow sweeping the sky, at noon. Nothing but a chilling dimness was seen or felt. I looked up. Chariot and demon charioteer were gone by; the votary still lived.

M. Emanuel was away three years. Reader, they were the three happiest years of my life. Do you scout the paradox? Listen.

I commenced my school; I worked—I worked hard. I deemed myself the steward of his property, and determined, God willing, to render a good account. Pupils came—burghers at first—a higher class ere long. About the middle of the second year an unexpected chance threw into my hands an additional hundred pounds: one day I received from England a letter containing that sum. It came from Mr. Marchmont, the cousin and heir of my dear and dead mistress. He was just recovering from a dangerous illness; the money was a peace-offering to his conscience, reproaching him in the matter of, I know not what, papers or memoranda found after his kinswoman’s death—naming or recommending Lucy Snowe. Mrs. Barrett had given him my address. How far his conscience had been sinned against, I never inquired. I asked no questions, but took the cash and made it useful.

With this hundred pounds I ventured to take the house adjoining mine. I would not leave that which M. Paul had chosen, in which he had left, and where he expected again to find me. My externat became a pensionnat; that also prospered.

The secret of my success did not lie so much in myself, in any endowment, any power of mine, as in a new state of circumstances, a wonderfully changed life, a relieved heart. The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle. At parting, I had been left a legacy; such a thought for the present, such a hope for the future, such a motive for a persevering, a laborious, an enterprising, a patient and a brave course—I
could
not flag. Few things shook me now; few things had importance to vex, intimidate, or depress me: most things pleased—mere trifles had a charm.

Do not think that this genial flame sustained itself, or lived wholly on a bequeathed hope or a parting promise. A generous provider supplied bounteous fuel. I was spared all chill, all stint; I was not suffered to fear penury; I was not tried with suspense. By every vessel he wrote; he wrote as he gave and as he loved, in full-handed, full-hearted plenitude. He wrote because he liked to write; he did not abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and paper, because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her; because he was faithful and thoughtful, because he was tender and true. There was no sham and no cheat, and no hollow unreal in him. Apology never dropped her slippery oil on his lips—never proffered, by his pen, her coward feints and paltry nullities: he would give neither a stone, nor an excuse—neither a scorpion, nor a disappointment; his letters were real food that nourished, living water that refreshed.

And was I grateful? God knows! I believe that scarce a living being so remembered, so sustained, dealt with in kind so constant, honourable and noble, could be otherwise than grateful to the death.

Adherent to his own religion (in him was not the stuff of which is made the facile apostate), he freely left me my pure faith. He did not teaze nor tempt. He said:—

‘Remain a Protestant. My little English Puritan, I love Protestantism in you. I own its severe charm. There is something in its ritual I cannot receive myself, but it is the sole creed for “Lucy.”’

All Rome could not put into him bigotry, nor the Propaganda itself make him a real Jesuit. He was born honest, and not false—artless, and not cunning—a freeman, and not a slave. His tenderness had rendered him ductile in a priest’s hands, his affection, his devotedness, his sincere pious enthusiasm blinded his kind eyes sometimes, made him abandon justice to himself to do the work of craft, and serve the ends of selfishness; but these are faults so rare to find, so costly to their owner to indulge, we scarce know whether they will not one day be reckoned amongst the jewels.

And now the three years are past: M. Emanuel’s return is fixed. It is Autumn; he is to be with me ere the mists of November come. My school flourishes, my house is ready: I have made him a little library, filled its shelves with the books he left in my care: I have cultivated out of love for him (I was naturally no florist) the plants he preferred, and some of them are yet in bloom. I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree; he is more my own.

The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere; but—he is coming.

Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind takes its autumn moan; but—he is coming.

The skies hang full and dark—a rack sails from the west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple as monarch in his state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest—so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some signs of the sky; I have noted them ever since childhood. God, watch that sail! Oh! guard it!

The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee—‘keening’ at every window! It will rise—it will swell—it shrieks out long: wander as I may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing hours make it strong: by midnight, all sleepless watchers hear and fear a wild south-west storm.

That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had gorged their full sustenance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he fold the wings whose waft was thunder—the tremor of whose plumes was storm.

Peace, be still! Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered—not uttered till, when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.

Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Père Silas; Madame Walravens fulfilled her ninetieth year before she died. Farewell.

1
(p. 8) My visits to her resembled the sojourn of Christian
and
Hopeful: The reference is to two characters from John Bunyan’s The
Pilgrim’s Progress
(1678). Lucy’s own spiritual journey in the novel echoes this allegorical narrative.

2
(p. 15)
I, Lucy Snowe:
Brontë originally named her heroine Lucy Frost and then changed her mind. She wrote: “At first—I called her ‘Lucy Snowe’ (spelt with an ‘e’) which ‘Snowe’ I afterwards changed to ‘Frost.’ Subsequently—I rather regretted the change and wished it ‘Snowe’ again. A cold name she must have” (Barker,
The Brontës,
p. 706; see “For Further Reading”).

3
(p. 74)
We know your skill in physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance:
The popular nineteenth-century science of phrenology held that you could read an individual’s character through the bone structure of his or her skull. Brontë had a reading done of her physiognomy with her publisher George Smith in 1851 while she was writing
Villette
(see Barker, p. 680) .

4
(p. 84)
Désirée... was reading to me some little essay of Mrs. Barbauld’s:
The reference is to Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825), a novelist and essayist who was a member of the eighteenth-century literary circle the Bluestockings, often satirized as a group of pedantic and pretentious women. Throughout the novel Lucy fears being mistaken for a “blue.”

5
(p. 123)
This longing ... it was necessary to knock on the head; which I did ... after the manner ofjael to Sisera:
Sisera, a cruel leader of the Israelites, escaped a battle by seeking shelter in Jael’s tent. While he was sleeping she murdered him by driving a nail into his brain. The biblical account is given in the book of Judges (chapter 4).

6
(p. 233)
Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace:
In the biblical account in the book of Daniel (chapter 3), three men refuse to worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s idol and he throws them into a burning furnace. God saves them and they emerge from the flames unharmed.

7
(p. 261)
the desolate and sepulchral summit of a Nebo:
Mount Nebo is in Jordan. In the Bible, God shows Moses the promised land from Nebo but refuses to let him travel there. Moses dies soon after (Deuteronomy 34).

8
(p. 286)
I served two masters: I bowed down in the house of Rimmon, and lifted the heart at another shrine:
In the Bible (2 Kings 5), Naaman is converted to believing in God when Elisha cures him of leprosy. After his conversion he continues to pray to the god Rimmon.

9
(p. 291)
What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti:
Vashti is a beautiful biblical queen. The actress described here is modeled after the famous French actress Mademoiselle Rachel (Elisa Félix, 1802-1858). Brontë saw Rachel perform during the time she was composing
Villette.

10
(p. 302)
feasted on my crust from the Barmecide’s loaf:
In a story from
The Arabian Nights,
Schacabac is served imaginary food and drink by the wealthy Barmecide family. He goes along with the joke until he is rewarded with real sustenance.