Chapter: CHAPTER XXXIX.

OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE.


Fascinated as by a basilisk with three heads, I could not leave this
clique; the ground near them seemed to hold my feet. The canopy of
entwined trees held out shadow, the night whispered a pledge of
protection, and an officious lamp flashed just one beam to show me an
obscure, safe seat, and then vanished. Let me now briefly tell the
reader all that, during the past dark fortnight, I have been silently
gathering from Rumour, respecting the origin and the object of M.
Emanuel's departure. The tale is short, and not new: its alpha is
Mammon, and its omega Interest.

If Madame Walravens was hideous as a Hindoo idol, she seemed also to
possess, in the estimation of these her votaries, an idol's
consequence. The fact was, she had been rich--very rich; and though,
for the present, without the command of money, she was likely one day
to be rich again. At Basseterre, in Guadaloupe, she possessed a large
estate, received in dowry on her marriage sixty years ago, sequestered
since her husband's failure; but now, it was supposed, cleared of
claim, and, if duly looked after by a competent agent of integrity,
considered capable of being made, in a few years, largely productive.

Pere Silas took an interest in this prospective improvement for the
sake of religion and the church, whereof Magliore Walravens was a
devout daughter. Madame Beck, distantly related to the hunchback and
knowing her to be without family of her own, had long brooded over
contingencies with a mother's calculating forethought, and, harshly
treated as she was by Madame Walravens, never ceased to court her for
interest's sake. Madame Beck and the priest were thus, for money
reasons, equally and sincerely interested in the nursing of the West
Indian estate.

But the distance was great, and the climate hazardous. The competent
and upright agent wanted, must be a devoted man. Just such a man had
Madame Walravens retained for twenty years in her service, blighting
his life, and then living on him, like an old fungus; such a man had
Pere Silas trained, taught, and bound to him by the ties of gratitude,
habit, and belief. Such a man Madame Beck knew, and could in some
measure influence. "My pupil," said Pere Silas, "if he remains in
Europe, runs risk of apostacy, for he has become entangled with a
heretic." Madame Beck made also her private comment, and preferred in
her own breast her secret reason for desiring expatriation. The thing
she could not obtain, she desired not another to win: rather would she
destroy it. As to Madame Walravens, she wanted her money and her land,
and knew Paul, if he liked, could make the best and faithfullest
steward: so the three self-seekers banded and beset the one unselfish.
They reasoned, they appealed, they implored; on his mercy they cast
themselves, into his hands they confidingly thrust their interests.
They asked but two or three years of devotion--after that, he should
live for himself: one of the number, perhaps, wished that in the
meantime he might die.

No living being ever humbly laid his advantage at M. Emanuel's feet, or
confidingly put it into his hands, that he spurned the trust or
repulsed the repository. What might be his private pain or inward
reluctance to leave Europe--what his calculations for his own
future--none asked, or knew, or reported. All this was a blank to me.
His conferences with his confessor I might guess; the part duty and
religion were made to play in the persuasions used, I might conjecture.
He was gone, and had made no sign. There my knowledge closed.

       *       *       *       *       *

With my head bent, and my forehead resting on my hands, I sat amidst
grouped tree-stems and branching brushwood. Whatever talk passed
amongst my neighbours, I might hear, if I would; I was near enough; but
for some time, there was scarce motive to attend. They gossiped about
the dresses, the music, the illuminations, the fine night. I listened
to hear them say, "It is calm weather for _his_ voyage; the _Antigua_"
(his ship) "will sail prosperously." No such remark fell; neither the
_Antigua_, nor her course, nor her passenger were named.

Perhaps the light chat scarcely interested old Madame Walravens more
than it did me; she appeared restless, turning her head now to this
side, now that, looking through the trees, and among the crowd, as if
expectant of an arrival and impatient of delay. "Ou sont-ils? Pourquoi
ne viennent-ils?" I heard her mutter more than once; and at last, as if
determined to have an answer to her question--which hitherto none
seemed to mind, she spoke aloud this phrase--a phrase brief enough,
simple enough, but it sent a shock through me--"Messieurs et mesdames,"
said she, "ou donc est Justine Marie?"

"Justine Marie!" What was this? Justine Marie--the dead nun--where was
she? Why, in her grave, Madame Walravens--what can you want with her?
You shall go to her, but she shall not come to you.

Thus _I_ should have answered, had the response lain with me, but
nobody seemed to be of my mind; nobody seemed surprised, startled, or
at a loss. The quietest commonplace answer met the strange, the
dead-disturbing, the Witch-of-Endor query of the hunchback.

"Justine Marie," said one, "is coming; she is in the kiosk; she will be
here presently."

Out of this question and reply sprang a change in the chat--chat it
still remained, easy, desultory, familiar gossip. Hint, allusion,
comment, went round the circle, but all so broken, so dependent on
references to persons not named, or circumstances not defined, that
listen as intently as I would--and I _did_ listen _now_ with a fated
interest--I could make out no more than that some scheme was on foot,
in which this ghostly Justine Marie--dead or alive--was concerned. This
family-junta seemed grasping at her somehow, for some reason; there
seemed question of a marriage, of a fortune--for whom I could not quite
make out--perhaps for Victor Kint, perhaps for Josef Emanuel--both were
bachelors. Once I thought the hints and jests rained upon a young
fair-haired foreigner of the party, whom they called Heinrich Muehler.
Amidst all the badinage, Madame Walravens still obtruded from time to
time, hoarse, cross-grained speeches; her impatience being diverted
only by an implacable surveillance of Desiree, who could not stir but
the old woman menaced her with her staff.

"La voila!" suddenly cried one of the gentlemen, "voila Justine Marie
qui arrive!"

This moment was for me peculiar. I called up to memory the pictured nun
on the panel; present to my mind was the sad love-story; I saw in
thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of the alley, the
strange birth of the berceau; I underwent a presentiment of discovery,
a strong conviction of coming disclosure. Ah! when imagination once
runs riot where do we stop? What winter tree so bare and
branchless--what way-side, hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy,
a passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in
spirituality, and make of it a phantom?

With solemn force pressed on my heart, the expectation of mystery
breaking up: hitherto I had seen this spectre only through a glass
darkly; now was I to behold it face to face. I leaned forward; I looked.

"She comes!" cried Josef Emanuel.

The circle opened as if opening to admit a new and welcome member. At
this instant a torch chanced to be carried past; its blaze aided the
pale moon in doing justice to the crisis, in lighting to perfection the
denouement pressing on. Surely those near me must have felt some little
of the anxiety I felt, in degree so unmeted. Of that group the coolest
must have "held his breath for a time!" As for me, my life stood still.

It is over. The moment and the nun are come. The crisis and the
revelation are passed by.

The flambeau glares still within a yard, held up in a park-keeper's
hand; its long eager tongue of flame almost licks the figure of the
Expected--there--where she stands full in my sight. What is she like?
What does she wear? How does she look? Who is she?

There are many masks in the park to-night, and as the hour wears late,
so strange a feeling of revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad,
that scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to say that she is
like the nun of the attic, that she wears black skirts and white
head-clothes, that she looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that
she is a risen ghost.

All falsities--all figments! We will not deal in this gear. Let us be
honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.

_Homely_, though, is an ill-chosen word. What I see is not precisely
homely. A girl of Villette stands there--a girl fresh from her
pensionnat. She is very comely, with the beauty indigenous to this
country. She looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh. Her cheeks
are round, her eyes good; her hair is abundant. She is handsomely
dressed. She is not alone; her escort consists of three persons--two
being elderly; these she addresses as "Mon Oncle" and "Ma Tante." She
laughs, she chats; good-humoured, buxom, and blooming, she looks, at
all points, the bourgeoise belle.

"So much for Justine Marie;" so much for ghosts and mystery: not that
this last was solved--this girl certainly is not my nun: what I saw in
the garret and garden must have been taller by a span.

We have looked at the city belle; we have cursorily glanced at the
respectable old uncle and aunt. Have we a stray glance to give to the
third member of this company? Can we spare him a moment's notice? We
ought to distinguish him so far, reader; he has claims on us; we do not
now meet him for the first time. I clasped my hands very hard, and I
drew my breath very deep: I held in the cry, I devoured the
ejaculation, I forbade the start, I spoke and I stirred no more than a
stone; but I knew what I looked on; through the dimness left in my eyes
by many nights' weeping, I knew him. They said he was to sail by the
_Antigua_. Madame Beck said so. She lied, or she had uttered what was
once truth, and failed to contradict it when it became false. The
_Antigua_ was gone, and there stood Paul Emanuel.

Was I glad? A huge load left me. Was it a fact to warrant joy? I know
not. Ask first what were the circumstances attendant on this respite?
How far did this delay concern _me?_ Were there not those whom it might
touch more nearly?

After all, who may this young girl, this Justine Marie, be? Not a
stranger, reader; she is known to me by sight; she visits at the Rue
Fossette: she is often of Madame Beck's Sunday parties. She is a
relation of both the Becks and Walravens; she derives her baptismal
name from the sainted nun who would have been her aunt had she lived;
her patronymic is Sauveur; she is an heiress and an orphan, and M.
Emanuel is her guardian; some say her godfather.

The family junta wish this heiress to be married to one of their
band--which is it? Vital question--which is it?

I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught
had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable.
I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth;
I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and
daring the dread glance. O Titaness among deities! the covered outline
of thine aspect sickens often through its uncertainty, but define to us
one trait, show us one lineament, clear in awful sincerity; we may gasp
in untold terror, but with that gasp we drink in a breath of thy
divinity; our heart shakes, and its currents sway like rivers lifted by
earthquake, but we have swallowed strength. To see and know the worst
is to take from Fear her main advantage.

The Walravens' party, augmented in numbers, now became very gay. The
gentlemen fetched refreshments from the kiosk, all sat down on the turf
under the trees; they drank healths and sentiments; they laughed, they
jested. M. Emanuel underwent some raillery, half good-humoured, half, I
thought, malicious, especially on Madame Beck's part. I soon gathered
that his voyage had been temporarily deferred of his own will, without
the concurrence, even against the advice, of his friends; he had let
the _Antigua_ go, and had taken his berth in the _Paul et Virginie_,
appointed to sail a fortnight later. It was his reason for this resolve
which they teased him to assign, and which he would only vaguely
indicate as "the settlement of a little piece of business which he had
set his heart upon." What _was_ this business? Nobody knew. Yes, there
was one who seemed partly, at least, in his confidence; a meaning look
passed between him and Justine Marie. "La petite va m'aider--n'est-ce
pas?" said he. The answer was prompt enough, God knows?

"Mais oui, je vous aiderai de tout mon coeur. Vous ferez de moi tout ce
que vous voudrez, mon parrain."

And this dear "parrain" took her hand and lifted it to his grateful
lips. Upon which demonstration, I saw the light-complexioned young
Teuton, Heinrich Muehler, grow restless, as if he did not like it. He
even grumbled a few words, whereat M. Emanuel actually laughed in his
face, and with the ruthless triumph of the assured conqueror, he drew
his ward nearer to him.

M. Emanuel was indeed very joyous that night. He seemed not one whit
subdued by the change of scene and action impending. He was the true
life of the party; a little despotic, perhaps, determined to be chief
in mirth, as well as in labour, yet from moment to moment proving
indisputably his right of leadership. His was the wittiest word, the
pleasantest anecdote, the frankest laugh. Restlessly active, after his
manner, he multiplied himself to wait on all; but oh! I saw which was
his favourite. I saw at whose feet he lay on the turf, I saw whom he
folded carefully from the night air, whom he tended, watched, and
cherished as the apple of his eye.

Still, hint and raillery flew thick, and still I gathered that while M.
Paul should be absent, working for others, these others, not quite
ungrateful, would guard for him the treasure he left in Europe. Let him
bring them an Indian fortune: they would give him in return a young
bride and a rich inheritance. As for the saintly consecration, the vow
of constancy, that was forgotten: the blooming and charming Present
prevailed over the Past; and, at length, his nun was indeed buried.

Thus it must be. The revelation was indeed come. Presentiment had not
been mistaken in her impulse: there is a kind of presentiment which
never _is_ mistaken; it was I who had for a moment miscalculated; not
seeing the true bearing of the oracle, I had thought she muttered of
vision when, in truth, her prediction touched reality.

I might have paused longer upon what I saw; I might have deliberated
ere I drew inferences. Some, perhaps, would have held the premises
doubtful, the proofs insufficient; some slow sceptics would have
incredulously examined ere they conclusively accepted the project of a
marriage between a poor and unselfish man of forty, and his wealthy
ward of eighteen; but far from me such shifts and palliatives, far from
me such temporary evasion of the actual, such coward fleeing from the
dread, the swift-footed, the all-overtaking Fact, such feeble suspense
of submission to her the sole sovereign, such paltering and faltering
resistance to the Power whose errand is to march conquering and to
conquer, such traitor defection from the TRUTH.

No. I hastened to accept the whole plan. I extended my grasp and took
it all in. I gathered it to me with a sort of rage of haste, and folded
it round me, as the soldier struck on the field folds his colours about
his breast. I invoked Conviction to nail upon me the certainty,
abhorred while embraced, to fix it with the strongest spikes her
strongest strokes could drive; and when the iron had entered well my
soul, I stood up, as I thought, renovated.

In my infatuation, I said, "Truth, you are a good mistress to your
faithful servants! While a Lie pressed me, how I suffered! Even when
the Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the fancy, and warm
to the feelings, it wasted me with hourly torment. The persuasion that
affection was won could not be divorced from the dread that, by another
turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth stripped away Falsehood, and
Flattery, and Expectancy, and here I stand--free!"

Nothing remained now but to take my freedom to my chamber, to carry it
with me to my bed and see what I could make of it. The play was not
yet, indeed, quite played out. I might have waited and watched longer
that love-scene under the trees, that sylvan courtship. Had there been
nothing of love in the demonstration, my Fancy in this hour was so
generous, so creative, she could have modelled for it the most salient
lineaments, and given it the deepest life and highest colour of
passion. But I _would_ not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would
not violate my nature. And then--something tore me so cruelly under my
shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and
talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt
jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr.
John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears,
while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of harmony still
acknowledged in it a charm. This was an outrage. The love born of
beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare
to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life
after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy,
consolidated by affection's pure and durable alloy, submitted by
intellect to intellect's own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own
process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at
Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in
_this_ Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its
culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.

I turned from the group of trees and the "merrie companie" in its
shade. Midnight was long past; the concert was over, the crowds were
thinning. I followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and well-lit
Haute-Ville (still well lit, this it seems was to be a "nuit blanche"
in Villette), I sought the dim lower quarter.

Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moonlight--forgotten in the
park--here once more flowed in upon perception. High she rode, and calm
and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fete, the
fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for
an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival
lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet,
bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray
she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting. She
and those stars seemed to me at once the types and witnesses of truth
all regnant. The night-sky lit her reign: like its slow-wheeling
progress, advanced her victory--that onward movement which has been,
and is, and will be from eternity to eternity.

These oil-twinkling streets are very still: I like them for their
lowliness and peace. Homeward-bound burghers pass me now and then, but
these companies are pedestrians, make little noise, and are soon gone.
So well do I love Villette under her present aspect, not willingly
would I re-enter under a roof, but that I am bent on pursuing my
strange adventure to a successful close, and quietly regaining my bed
in the great dormitory, before Madame Beck comes home.

Only one street lies between me and the Rue Fossette; as I enter it,
for the first time, the sound of a carriage tears up the deep peace of
this quarter. It comes this way--comes very fast. How loud sounds its
rattle on the paved path! The street is narrow, and I keep carefully to
the causeway. The carriage thunders past, but what do I see, or fancy I
see, as it rushes by? Surely something white fluttered from that
window--surely a hand waved a handkerchief. Was that signal meant for
me? Am I known? Who could recognise me? That is not M. de
Bassompierre's carriage, nor Mrs. Bretton's; and besides, neither the
Hotel Crecy nor the chateau of La Terrasse lies in that direction.
Well, I have no time for conjecture; I must hurry home.

Gaining the Rue Fossette, reaching the pensionnat, all there was still;
no fiacre had yet arrived with Madame and Desiree. I had left the great
door ajar; should I find it thus? Perhaps the wind or some other
accident may have thrown it to with sufficient force to start the
spring-bolt? In that case, hopeless became admission; my adventure must
issue in catastrophe. I lightly pushed the heavy leaf; would it yield?

Yes. As soundless, as unresisting, as if some propitious genius had
waited on a sesame-charm, in the vestibule within. Entering with bated
breath, quietly making all fast, shoelessly mounting the staircase, I
sought the dormitory, and reached my couch.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ay! I reached it, and once more drew a free inspiration. The next
moment, I almost shrieked--almost, but not quite, thank Heaven!

Throughout the dormitory, throughout the house, there reigned at this
hour the stillness of death. All slept, and in such hush, it seemed
that none dreamed. Stretched on the nineteen beds lay nineteen forms,
at full-length and motionless. On mine--the twentieth couch--nothing
_ought_ to have lain: I had left it void, and void should have found
it. What, then; do I see between the half-drawn curtains? What dark,
usurping shape, supine, long, and strange? Is it a robber who has made
his way through the open street-door, and lies there in wait? It looks
very black, I think it looks--not human. Can it be a wandering dog that
has come in from the street and crept and nestled hither? Will it
spring, will it leap out if I approach? Approach I must. Courage! One
step!--

My head reeled, for by the faint night-lamp, I saw stretched on my bed
the old phantom--the NUN.

A cry at this moment might have ruined me. Be the spectacle what it
might, I could afford neither consternation, scream, nor swoon.
Besides, I was not overcome. Tempered by late incidents, my nerves
disdained hysteria. Warm from illuminations, and music, and thronging
thousands, thoroughly lashed up by a new scourge, I defied spectra. In
a moment, without exclamation, I had rushed on the haunted couch;
nothing leaped out, or sprung, or stirred; all the movement was mine,
so was all the life, the reality, the substance, the force; as my
instinct felt. I tore her up--the incubus! I held her on high--the
goblin! I shook her loose--the mystery! And down she fell--down all
around me--down in shreds and fragments--and I trode upon her.

Here again--behold the branchless tree, the unstabled Rosinante; the
film of cloud, the flicker of moonshine. The long nun proved a long
bolster dressed in a long black stole, and artfully invested with a
white veil. The garments in very truth, strange as it may seem, were
genuine nun's garments, and by some hand they had been disposed with a
view to illusion. Whence came these vestments? Who contrived this
artifice? These questions still remained. To the head-bandage was
pinned a slip of paper: it bore in pencil these mocking words--

"The nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe her wardrobe. She will be
seen in the Rue Fossette no more."

And what and who was she that had haunted me? She, I had actually seen
three times. Not a woman of my acquaintance had the stature of that
ghost. She was not of a female height. Not to any man I knew could the
machination, for a moment, be attributed.

Still mystified beyond expression, but as thoroughly, as suddenly,
relieved from all sense of the spectral and unearthly; scorning also to
wear out my brain with the fret of a trivial though insoluble riddle, I
just bundled together stole, veil, and bandages, thrust them beneath my
pillow, lay down, listened till I heard the wheels of Madame's
home-returning fiacre, then turned, and worn out by many nights'
vigils, conquered, too, perhaps, by the now reacting narcotic, I deeply
slept.





CHAPTER XL.

THE HAPPY PAIR.


The day succeeding this remarkable Midsummer night, proved no common
day. I do not mean that it brought signs in heaven above, or portents
on the earth beneath; nor do I allude to meteorological phenomena, to
storm, flood, or whirlwind. On the contrary: the sun rose jocund, with
a July face. Morning decked her beauty with rubies, and so filled her
lap with roses, that they fell from her in showers, making her path
blush: the Hours woke fresh as nymphs, and emptying on the early hills
their dew-vials, they stepped out dismantled of vapour: shadowless,
azure, and glorious, they led the sun's steeds on a burning and
unclouded course.

In short, it was as fine a day as the finest summer could boast; but I
doubt whether I was not the sole inhabitant of the Rue Fossette, who
cared or remembered to note this pleasant fact. Another thought busied
all other heads; a thought, indeed, which had its share in my
meditations; but this master consideration, not possessing for me so
entire a novelty, so overwhelming a suddenness, especially so dense a
mystery, as it offered to the majority of my co-speculators thereon,
left me somewhat more open than the rest to any collateral observation
or impression.

Still, while walking in the garden, feeling the sunshine, and marking
the blooming and growing plants, I pondered the same subject the whole
house discussed.

What subject?

Merely this. When matins came to be said, there was a place vacant in
the first rank of boarders. When breakfast was served, there remained a
coffee-cup unclaimed. When the housemaid made the beds, she found in
one, a bolster laid lengthwise, clad in a cap and night-gown; and when
Ginevra Fanshawe's music-mistress came early, as usual, to give the
morning lesson, that accomplished and promising young person, her
pupil, failed utterly to be forthcoming.

High and low was Miss Fanshawe sought; through length and breadth was
the house ransacked; vainly; not a trace, not an indication, not so
much as a scrap of a billet rewarded the search; the nymph was
vanished, engulfed in the past night, like a shooting star swallowed up
by darkness.

Deep was the dismay of surveillante teachers, deeper the horror of the
defaulting directress. Never had I seen Madame Beck so pale or so
appalled. Here was a blow struck at her tender part, her weak side;
here was damage done to her interest. How, too, had the untoward event
happened? By what outlet had the fugitive taken wing? Not a casement
was found unfastened, not a pane of glass broken; all the doors were
bolted secure. Never to this day has Madame Beck obtained satisfaction
on this point, nor indeed has anybody else concerned, save and
excepting one, Lucy Snowe, who could not forget how, to facilitate a
certain enterprise, a certain great door had been drawn softly to its
lintel, closed, indeed, but neither bolted nor secure. The thundering
carriage-and-pair encountered were now likewise recalled, as well as
that puzzling signal, the waved handkerchief.

From these premises, and one or two others, inaccessible to any but
myself, I could draw but one inference. It was a case of elopement.
Morally certain on this head, and seeing Madame Beck's profound
embarrassment, I at last communicated my conviction. Having alluded to
M. de Hamal's suit, I found, as I expected, that Madame Beck was
perfectly au fait to that affair. She had long since discussed it with
Mrs. Cholmondeley, and laid her own responsibility in the business on
that lady's shoulders. To Mrs. Cholmondeley and M. de Bassompierre she
now had recourse.

We found that the Hotel Crecy was already alive to what had happened.
Ginevra had written to her cousin Paulina, vaguely signifying hymeneal
intentions; communications had been received from the family of de
Hamal; M. de Bassompierre was on the track of the fugitives. He
overtook them too late.

In the course of the week, the post brought me a note. I may as well
transcribe it; it contains explanation on more than one point:--

'DEAR OLD TIM "(short for Timon),--" I am off you see--gone like a
shot. Alfred and I intended to be married in this way almost from the
first; we never meant to be spliced in the humdrum way of other people;
Alfred has too much spirit for that, and so have I--Dieu merci! Do you
know, Alfred, who used to call you 'the dragon,' has seen so much of
you during the last few months, that he begins to feel quite friendly
towards you. He hopes you won't miss him now that he has gone; he begs
to apologize for any little trouble he may have given you. He is afraid
he rather inconvenienced you once when he came upon you in the grenier,
just as you were reading a letter seemingly of the most special
interest; but he could not resist the temptation to give you a start,
you appeared so wonderfully taken up with your correspondent. En
revanche, he says you once frightened him by rushing in for a dress or
a shawl, or some other chiffon, at the moment when he had struck a
light, and was going to take a quiet whiff of his cigar, while waiting
for me.

"Do you begin to comprehend by this time that M. le Comte de Hamal was
the nun of the attic, and that he came to see your humble servant? I
will tell you how he managed it. You know he has the entree of the
Athenee, where two or three of his nephews, the sons of his eldest
sister, Madame de Melcy, are students. You know the court of the
Athenee is on the other side of the high wall bounding your walk, the
allee defendue. Alfred can climb as well as he can dance or fence: his
amusement was to make the escalade of our pensionnat by mounting, first
the wall; then--by the aid of that high tree overspreading the grand
berceau, and resting some of its boughs on the roof of the lower
buildings of our premises--he managed to scale the first classe and the
grand salle. One night, by the way, he fell out of this tree, tore down
some of the branches, nearly broke his own neck, and after all, in
running away, got a terrible fright, and was nearly caught by two
people, Madame Beck and M. Emanuel, he thinks, walking in the alley.
From the grande salle the ascent is not difficult to the highest block
of building, finishing in the great garret. The skylight, you know, is,
day and night, left half open for air; by the skylight he entered.
Nearly a year ago I chanced to tell him our legend of the nun; that
suggested his romantic idea of the spectral disguise, which I think you
must allow he has very cleverly carried out.

"But for the nun's black gown and white veil, he would have been caught
again and again both by you and that tiger-Jesuit, M. Paul. He thinks
you both capital ghost-seers, and very brave. What I wonder at is,
rather your secretiveness than your courage. How could you endure the
visitations of that long spectre, time after time, without crying out,
telling everybody, and rousing the whole house and neighbourhood?

"Oh, and how did you like the nun as a bed-fellow? _I_ dressed her up:
didn't I do it well? Did you shriek when you saw her: I should have
gone mad; but then you have such nerves!--real iron and bend-leather! I
believe you feel nothing. You haven't the same sensitiveness that a
person of my constitution has. You seem to me insensible both to pain
and fear and grief. You are a real old Diogenes.

"Well, dear grandmother! and are you not mightily angry at my moonlight
flitting and run away match? I assure you it is excellent fun, and I
did it partly to spite that minx, Paulina, and that bear, Dr. John: to
show them that, with all their airs, I could get married as well as
they. M. de Bassompierre was at first in a strange fume with Alfred; he
threatened a prosecution for 'detournement de mineur,' and I know not
what; he was so abominably in earnest, that I found myself forced to do
a little bit of the melodramatic--go down on my knees, sob, cry, drench
three pocket-handkerchiefs. Of course, 'mon oncle' soon gave in;
indeed, where was the use of making a fuss? I am married, and that's
all about it. He still says our marriage is not legal, because I am not
of age, forsooth! As if that made any difference! I am just as much
married as if I were a hundred. However, we are to be married again,
and I am to have a trousseau, and Mrs. Cholmondeley is going to
superintend it; and there are some hopes that M. de Bassompierre will
give me a decent portion, which will be very convenient, as dear Alfred
has nothing but his nobility, native and hereditary, and his pay. I
only wish uncle would do things unconditionally, in a generous,
gentleman-like fashion; he is so disagreeable as to make the dowry
depend on Alfred's giving his written promise that he will never touch
cards or dice from the day it is paid down. They accuse my angel of a
tendency to play: I don't know anything about that, but I _do_ know he
is a dear, adorable creature.

"I cannot sufficiently extol the genius with which de Hamal managed our
flight. How clever in him to select the night of the fete, when Madame
(for he knows her habits), as he said, would infallibly be absent at
the concert in the park. I suppose _you_ must have gone with her. I
watched you rise and leave the dormitory about eleven o'clock. How you
returned alone, and on foot, I cannot conjecture. That surely was _you_
we met in the narrow old Rue St. Jean? Did you see me wave my
handkerchief from the carriage window?

"Adieu! Rejoice in my good luck: congratulate me on my supreme
happiness, and believe me, dear cynic and misanthrope, yours, in the
best of health and spirits,

GINEVRA LAURA DE HAMAL, nee FANSHAWE.

"P.S.--Remember, I am a countess now. Papa, mamma, and the girls at
home, will be delighted to hear that. 'My daughter the Countess!' 'My
sister the Countess!' Bravo! Sounds rather better than Mrs. John
Bretton, hein?"

       *       *       *       *       *

In winding up Mistress Fanshawe's memoirs, the reader will no doubt
expect to hear that she came finally to bitter expiation of her
youthful levities. Of course, a large share of suffering lies in
reserve for her future.

A few words will embody my farther knowledge respecting her.

I saw her towards the close of her honeymoon. She called on Madame
Beck, and sent for me into the salon. She rushed into my arms laughing.
She looked very blooming and beautiful: her curls were longer, her
cheeks rosier than ever: her white bonnet and her Flanders veil, her
orange-flowers and her bride's dress, became her mightily.

"I have got my portion!" she cried at once; (Ginevra ever stuck to the
substantial; I always thought there was a good trading element in her
composition, much as she scorned the "bourgeoise;") "and uncle de
Bassompierre is quite reconciled. I don't mind his calling Alfred a
'nincompoop'--that's only his coarse Scotch breeding; and I believe
Paulina envies me, and Dr. John is wild with jealousy--fit to blow his
brains out--and I'm so happy! I really think I've hardly anything left
to wish for--unless it be a carriage and an hotel, and, oh! I--must
introduce you to 'mon mari.' Alfred, come here!"

And Alfred appeared from the inner salon, where he was talking to
Madame Beck, receiving the blended felicitations and reprimands of that
lady. I was presented under my various names: the Dragon, Diogenes, and
Timon. The young Colonel was very polite. He made me a prettily-turned,
neatly-worded apology, about the ghost-visits, &c., concluding with
saying that "the best excuse for all his iniquities stood there!"
pointing to his bride.

And then the bride sent him back to Madame Beck, and she took me to
herself, and proceeded literally to suffocate me with her unrestrained
spirits, her girlish, giddy, wild nonsense. She showed her ring
exultingly; she called herself Madame la Comtesse de Hamal, and asked
how it sounded, a score of times. I said very little. I gave her only
the crust and rind of my nature. No matter she expected of me nothing
better--she knew me too well to look for compliments--my dry gibes
pleased her well enough and the more impassible and prosaic my mien,
the more merrily she laughed.

Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded to leave the army as
the surest way of weaning him from certain unprofitable associates and
habits; a post of attache was procured for him, and he and his young
wife went abroad. I thought she would forget me now, but she did not.
For many years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of
correspondence. During the first year or two, it was only of herself
and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself and
a certain, new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassompierre de
Hamal began to reign in his father's stead. There were great boastings
about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon miracles of
precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against the phlegmatic
incredulity with which I received them. I didn't know "what it was to
be a mother;" "unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the
maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me," and so on. In due course
of nature this young gentleman took his degrees in teething, measles,
hooping-cough: that was a terrible time for me--the mamma's letters
became a perfect shout of affliction; never woman was so put upon by
calamity: never human being stood in such need of sympathy. I was
frightened at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found out
there was more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed into my
natural cruel insensibility. As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered
each storm like a hero. Five times was that youth "in articulo mortis,"
and five times did he miraculously revive.

In the course of years there arose ominous murmurings against Alfred
the First; M. de Bassompierre had to be appealed to, debts had to be
paid, some of them of that dismal and dingy order called "debts of
honour;" ignoble plaints and difficulties became frequent. Under every
cloud, no matter what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out
lustily for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meeting any distress
single-handed. In some shape, from some quarter or other, she was
pretty sure to obtain her will, and so she got on--fighting the battle
of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering as little as any human
being I have ever known.





CHAPTER XLI.

FAUBOURG CLOTILDE.


Must I, ere I close, render some account of that Freedom and Renovation
which I won on the fete-night? Must I tell how I and the two stalwart
companions I brought home from the illuminated park bore the test of
intimate acquaintance?

I tried them the very next day. They had boasted their strength loudly
when they reclaimed me from love and its bondage, but upon my demanding
deeds, not words, some evidence of better comfort, some experience of a
relieved life--Freedom excused himself, as for the present impoverished
and disabled to assist; and Renovation never spoke; he had died in the
night suddenly.

I had nothing left for it then but to trust secretly that conjecture
might have hurried me too fast and too far, to sustain the oppressive
hour by reminders of the distorting and discolouring magic of jealousy.
After a short and vain struggle, I found myself brought back captive to
the old rack of suspense, tied down and strained anew.

Shall I yet see him before he goes? Will he bear me in mind? Does he
purpose to come? Will this day--will the next hour bring him? or must I
again assay that corroding pain of long attent--that rude agony of
rupture at the close, that mute, mortal wrench, which, in at once
uprooting hope and doubt, shakes life; while the hand that does the
violence cannot be caressed to pity, because absence interposes her
barrier!

It was the Feast of the Assumption; no school was held. The boarders
and teachers, after attending mass in the morning, were gone a long
walk into the country to take their gouter, or afternoon meal, at some
farm-house. I did not go with them, for now but two days remained ere
the _Paul et Virginie_ must sail, and I was clinging to my last chance,
as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last raft or cable.

There was some joiners' work to do in the first classe, some bench or
desk to repair; holidays were often turned to account for the
performance of these operations, which could not be executed when the
rooms were filled with pupils. As I sat solitary, purposing to adjourn
to the garden and leave the coast clear, but too listless to fulfil my
own intent, I heard the workmen coming.

Foreign artisans and servants do everything by couples: I believe it
would take two Labassecourien carpenters to drive a nail. While tying
on my bonnet, which had hitherto hung by its ribbons from my idle hand,
I vaguely and momentarily wondered to hear the step of but one
"ouvrier." I noted, too--as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary
leisure to note the merest trifles--that this man wore shoes, and not
sabots: I concluded that it must be the master-carpenter, coming to
inspect before he sent his journeymen. I threw round me my scarf. He
advanced; he opened the door; my back was towards it; I felt a little
thrill--a curious sensation, too quick and transient to be analyzed. I
turned, I stood in the supposed master-artisan's presence: looking
towards the door-way, I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes
printed upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.

Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary Heaven bring to the
suppliant no fulfilment. Once haply in life, one golden gift falls
prone in the lap--one boon full and bright, perfect from Fruition's
mint.

M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he probably purposed to travel--a
surtout, guarded with velvet; I thought him prepared for instant
departure, and yet I had understood that two days were yet to run
before the ship sailed. He looked well and cheerful. He looked kind and
benign: he came in with eagerness; he was close to me in one second; he
was all amity. It might be his bridegroom mood which thus brightened
him. Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If
this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced,
unnatural distance. I loved him well--too well not to smite out of my
path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind
farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes,
would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it
would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it--I
would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.

The interview would be short, of course: he would say to me just what
he had said to each of the assembled pupils; he would take and hold my
hand two minutes; he would touch my cheek with his lips for the first,
last, only time--and then--no more. Then, indeed, the final parting,
then the wide separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to
him--across which, haply, he would not glance, to remember me.

He took my hand in one of his, with the other he put back my bonnet; he
looked into my face, his luminous smile went out, his lips expressed
something almost like the wordless language of a mother who finds a
child greatly and unexpectedly changed, broken with illness, or worn
out by want. A check supervened.

"Paul, Paul!" said a woman's hurried voice behind, "Paul, come into the
salon; I have yet a great many things to say to you--conversation for
the whole day--and so has Victor; and Josef is here. Come Paul, come to
your friends."

Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance or an inscrutable
instinct, pressed so near, she almost thrust herself between me and M.
Emanuel.

"Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like
a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I
thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to
feel what defied suppression, I cried--

"My heart will break!"

What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another
fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the
whisper, "Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep
sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet
with relief--I wept.

"Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it
will pass," said the calm Madame Beck.

To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being
left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply,
harshly, and briefly--"Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music
strange, strong, but life-giving.

"Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial
muscles all quivering as he spoke.

"But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly
rejoined her kinsman--

"Sortez d'ici!"

"I will send for Pere Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she
threatened pertinaciously.

"Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his
highest and most excited key, "Femme! sortez a l'instant!"

He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what
I had yet felt.

"What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; "it is an act characteristic of
men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive,
injudicious, inconsistent--a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in
the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character."

"You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, "but
you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less
fiercely, "be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face,
and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends;
in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of
sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what
I see; it _must_ have and give solace. _Leave me!_"

This time, in the "_leave me_" there was an intonation so bitter and so
imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one
moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him
dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was
opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick
rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement;
it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his
hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the
room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.

The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to
wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to
time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more
myself--re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless,
not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.

"It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he.

"It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said. "All these weary days
I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the
possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying
farewell!"

"Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck--that you do not know me?
Must I show and teach you my character? You _will_ have proof that I
can be a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still
in mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof
is ready. I come to justify myself."

"Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, Monsieur; I can listen
now."

"Then, in the first place, you must go out with me a good distance into
the town. I came on purpose to fetch you."

Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the
semblance of an objection, I re-tied my bonnet: I was ready.

The route he took was by the boulevards: he several times made me sit
down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I
was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.

"All these weary days," said he, repeating my words, with a gentle,
kindly mimicry of my voice and foreign accent, not new from his lips,
and of which the playful banter never wounded, not even when coupled,
as it often was, with the assertion, that however I might _write_ his
language, I _spoke_ and always should speak it imperfectly and
hesitatingly. "'All these weary days' I have not for one hour forgotten
you. Faithful women err in this, that they think themselves the sole
faithful of God's creatures. On a very fervent and living truth to
myself, I, too, till lately scarce dared count, from any quarter;
but----look at me."

I lifted my happy eyes: they _were_ happy now, or they would have been
no interpreters of my heart.

"Well," said he, after some seconds' scrutiny, "there is no denying
that signature: Constancy wrote it: her pen is of iron. Was the record
painful?"

"Severely painful," I said, with truth. "Withdraw her hand, Monsieur; I
can bear its inscribing force no more."

"Elle est toute pale," said he, speaking to himself; "cette figure-la
me fait mal."

"Ah! I am not pleasant to look at----?"

I could not help saying this; the words came unbidden: I never remember
the time when I had not a haunting dread of what might be the degree of
my outward deficiency; this dread pressed me at the moment with special
force.

A great softness passed upon his countenance; his violet eyes grew
suffused and glistening under their deep Spanish lashes: he started up;
"Let us walk on."

"Do I displease your eyes _much_?" I took courage to urge: the point
had its vital import for me.

He stopped, and gave me a short, strong answer; an answer which
silenced, subdued, yet profoundly satisfied. Ever after that I knew
what I was for _him_; and what I might be for the rest of the world, I
ceased painfully to care. Was it weak to lay so much stress on an
opinion about appearance? I fear it might be; I fear it was; but in
that case I must avow no light share of weakness. I must own great fear
of displeasing--a strong wish moderately to please M. Paul.

Whither we rambled, I scarce knew. Our walk was long, yet seemed short;
the path was pleasant, the day lovely. M. Emanuel talked of his
voyage--he thought of staying away three years. On his return from
Guadaloupe, he looked forward to release from liabilities and a clear
course; and what did I purpose doing in the interval of his absence? he
asked. I had talked once, he reminded me, of trying to be independent
and keeping a little school of my own: had I dropped the idea?

"Indeed, I had not: I was doing my best to save what would enable me to
put it in practice."

"He did not like leaving me in the Rue Fossette; he feared I should
miss him there too much--I should feel desolate--I should grow sad--?"

This was certain; but I promised to do my best to endure.

"Still," said he, speaking low, "there is another objection to your
present residence. I should wish to write to you sometimes: it would
not be well to have any uncertainty about the safe transmission of
letters; and in the Rue Fossette--in short, our Catholic discipline in
certain matters--though justifiable and expedient--might possibly,
under peculiar circumstances, become liable to misapplication--perhaps
abuse."

"But if you write," said I, "I _must_ have your letters; and I _will_
have them: ten directors, twenty directresses, shall not keep them from
me. I am a Protestant: I will not bear that kind of discipline:
Monsieur, I _will not_."

"Doucement--doucement," rejoined he; "we will contrive a plan; we have
our resources: soyez tranquille."

So speaking, he paused.

We were now returning from the long walk. We had reached the middle of
a clean Faubourg, where the houses were small, but looked pleasant. It
was before the white door-step of a very neat abode that M. Paul had
halted.

"I call here," said he.

He did not knock, but taking from his pocket a key, he opened and
entered at once. Ushering me in, he shut the door behind us. No servant
appeared. The vestibule was small, like the house, but freshly and
tastefully painted; its vista closed in a French window with vines
trained about the panes, tendrils, and green leaves kissing the glass.
Silence reigned in this dwelling.

Opening an inner door, M. Paul disclosed a parlour, or salon--very
tiny, but I thought, very pretty. Its delicate walls were tinged like a
blush; its floor was waxed; a square of brilliant carpet covered its
centre; its small round table shone like the mirror over its hearth;
there was a little couch, a little chiffonniere, the half-open,
crimson-silk door of which, showed porcelain on the shelves; there was
a French clock, a lamp; there were ornaments in biscuit china; the
recess of the single ample window was filled with a green stand,
bearing three green flower-pots, each filled with a fine plant glowing
in bloom; in one corner appeared a gueridon with a marble top, and upon
it a work-box, and a glass filled with violets in water. The lattice of
this room was open; the outer air breathing through, gave freshness,
the sweet violets lent fragrance.

"Pretty, pretty place!" said I. M. Paul smiled to see me so pleased.

"Must we sit down here and wait?" I asked in a whisper, half awed by
the deep pervading hush.

"We will first peep into one or two other nooks of this nutshell," he
replied.

"Dare you take the freedom of going all over the house?" I inquired.

"Yes, I dare," said he, quietly.

He led the way. I was shown a little kitchen with a little stove and
oven, with few but bright brasses, two chairs and a table. A small
cupboard held a diminutive but commodious set of earthenware.

"There is a coffee service of china in the salon," said M. Paul, as I
looked at the six green and white dinner-plates; the four dishes, the
cups and jugs to match.

Conducted up the narrow but clean staircase, I was permitted a glimpse
of two pretty cabinets of sleeping-rooms; finally, I was once more led
below, and we halted with a certain ceremony before a larger door than
had yet been opened.

Producing a second key, M. Emanuel adjusted it to the lock of this
door. He opened, put me in before him.

"Voici!" he cried.

I found myself in a good-sized apartment, scrupulously clean, though
bare, compared with those I had hitherto seen. The well-scoured boards
were carpetless; it contained two rows of green benches and desks, with
an alley down the centre, terminating in an estrade, a teacher's chair
and table; behind them a tableau. On the walls hung two maps; in the
windows flowered a few hardy plants; in short, here was a miniature
classe--complete, neat, pleasant.

"It is a school then?" said I. "Who keeps it? I never heard of an
establishment in this faubourg."

"Will you have the goodness to accept of a few prospectuses for
distribution in behalf of a friend of mine?" asked he, taking from his
surtout-pocket some quires of these documents, and putting them into my
hand. I looked, I read--printed in fair characters:--

"Externat de demoiselles. Numero 7, Faubourg Clotilde, Directrice,
Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe."

       *       *       *       *       *

And what did I say to M. Paul Emanuel?

Certain junctures of our lives must always be difficult of recall to
memory. Certain points, crises, certain feelings, joys, griefs, and
amazements, when reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and
whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun.

I can no more remember the thoughts or the words of the ten minutes
succeeding this disclosure, than I can retrace the experience of my
earliest year of life: and yet the first thing distinct to me is the
consciousness that I was speaking very fast, repeating over and over
again:--

"Did you do this, M. Paul? Is this your house? Did you furnish it? Did
you get these papers printed? Do you mean me? Am I the directress? Is
there another Lucy Snowe? Tell me: say something."

But he would not speak. His pleased silence, his laughing down-look,
his attitude, are visible to me now.

"How is it? I must know all--_all_," I cried.

The packet of papers fell on the floor. He had extended his hand, and I
had fastened thereon, oblivious of all else.

"Ah! you said I had forgotten you all these weary days," said he. "Poor
old Emanuel! These are the thanks he gets for trudging about three
mortal weeks from house-painter to upholsterer, from cabinet-maker to
charwoman. Lucy and Lucy's cot, the sole thoughts in his head!"

I hardly knew what to do. I first caressed the soft velvet on his cuff,
and then. I stroked the hand it surrounded. It was his foresight, his
goodness, his silent, strong, effective goodness, that overpowered me
by their proved reality. It was the assurance of his sleepless interest
which broke on me like a light from heaven; it was his--I will dare to
say it--his fond, tender look, which now shook me indescribably. In the
midst of all I forced myself to look at the practical.

"The trouble!" I cried, "and the cost! Had you money, M. Paul?"

"Plenty of money!" said he heartily. "The disposal of my large teaching
connection put me in possession of a handsome sum with part of it I
determined to give myself the richest treat that I _have_ known or
_shall_ know. I like this. I have reckoned on this hour day and night
lately. I would not come near you, because I would not forestall it.
Reserve is neither my virtue nor my vice. If I had put myself into your
power, and you had begun with your questions of look and lip--Where
have you been, M. Paul? What have you been doing? What is your
mystery?--my solitary first and last secret would presently have
unravelled itself in your lap. Now," he pursued, "you shall live here
and have a school; you shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall
think of me sometimes; you shall mind your health and happiness for my
sake, and when I come back--"

There he left a blank.

I promised to do all he told me. I promised to work hard and willingly.
"I will be your faithful steward," I said; "I trust at your coming the
account will be ready. Monsieur, monsieur, you are _too_ good!"

In such inadequate language my feelings struggled for expression: they
could not get it; speech, brittle and unmalleable, and cold as ice,
dissolved or shivered in the effort. He watched me, still; he gently
raised his hand to stroke my hair; it touched my lips in passing; I
pressed it close, I paid it tribute. He was my king; royal for me had
been that hand's bounty; to offer homage was both a joy and a duty.

       *       *       *       *       *

The afternoon hours were over, and the stiller time of evening shaded
the quiet faubourg. M. Paul claimed my hospitality; occupied and afoot
since morning, he needed refreshment; he said I should offer him
chocolate in my pretty gold and white china service. He went out and
ordered what was needful from the restaurant; he placed the small
gueridon and two chairs in the balcony outside the French window under
the screening vines. With what shy joy I accepted my part as hostess,
arranged the salver, served the benefactor-guest.

This balcony was in the rear of the house, the gardens of the faubourg
were round us, fields extended beyond. The air was still, mild, and
fresh. Above the poplars, the laurels, the cypresses, and the roses,
looked up a moon so lovely and so halcyon, the heart trembled under her
smile; a star shone subject beside her, with the unemulous ray of pure
love. In a large garden near us, a jet rose from a well, and a pale
statue leaned over the play of waters.

M. Paul talked to me. His voice was so modulated that it mixed
harmonious with the silver whisper, the gush, the musical sigh, in
which light breeze, fountain and foliage intoned their lulling vesper:

Happy hour--stay one moment! droop those plumes, rest those wings;
incline to mine that brow of Heaven! White Angel! let thy light linger;
leave its reflection on succeeding clouds; bequeath its cheer to that
time which needs a ray in retrospect!

Our meal was simple: the chocolate, the rolls, the plate of fresh
summer fruit, cherries and strawberries bedded in green leaves formed
the whole: but it was what we both liked better than a feast, and I
took a delight inexpressible in tending M. Paul. I asked him whether
his friends, Pere Silas and Madame Beck, knew what he had done--whether
they had seen my house?

"Mon amie," said he, "none knows what I have done save you and myself:
the pleasure is consecrated to us two, unshared and unprofaned. To
speak truth, there has been to me in this matter a refinement of
enjoyment I would not make vulgar by communication. Besides" (smiling)
"I wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I _could_ keep a secret. How often
has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution!
How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the
secret of Polichinelle!"

This was true enough: I had not spared him on this point, nor perhaps
on any other that was assailable. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted,
dear, faulty little man! You deserved candour, and from me always had
it.

Continuing my queries, I asked to whom the house belonged, who was my
landlord, the amount of my rent. He instantly gave me these particulars
in writing; he had foreseen and prepared all things.

The house was not M. Paul's--that I guessed: he was hardly the man to
become a proprietor; I more than suspected in him a lamentable absence
of the saving faculty; he could get, but not keep; he needed a
treasurer. The tenement, then, belonged to a citizen in the
Basse-Ville--a man of substance, M. Paul said; he startled me by
adding: "a friend of yours, Miss Lucy, a person who has a most
respectful regard for you." And, to my pleasant surprise, I found the
landlord was none other than M. Miret, the short-tempered and
kind-hearted bookseller, who had so kindly found me a seat that
eventful night in the park. It seems M. Miret was, in his station,
rich, as well as much respected, and possessed several houses in this
faubourg; the rent was moderate, scarce half of what it would have been
for a house of equal size nearer the centre of Villette.

"And then," observed M. Paul, "should fortune not favour you, though I
think she will, I have the satisfaction to think you are in good hands;
M. Miret will not be extortionate: the first year's rent you have
already in your savings; afterwards Miss Lucy must trust God, and
herself. But now, what will you do for pupils?"

"I must distribute my prospectuses."

"Right! By way of losing no time, I gave one to M. Miret yesterday.
Should you object to beginning with three petite bourgeoises, the
Demoiselles Miret? They are at your service."

"Monsieur, you forget nothing; you are wonderful. Object? It would
become me indeed to object! I suppose I hardly expect at the outset to
number aristocrats in my little day-school; I care not if they never
come. I shall be proud to receive M. Miret's daughters."

"Besides these," pursued he, "another pupil offers, who will come daily
to take lessons in English; and as she is rich, she will pay
handsomely. I mean my god-daughter and ward, Justine Marie Sauveur."

What is in a name?--what in three words? Till this moment I had
listened with living joy--I had answered with gleeful quickness; a name
froze me; three words struck me mute. The effect could not be hidden,
and indeed I scarce tried to hide it.

"What now?" said M. Paul.

"Nothing."

"Nothing! Your countenance changes: your colour and your very eyes
fade. Nothing! You must be ill; you have some suffering; tell me what."

I had nothing to tell.

He drew his chair nearer. He did not grow vexed, though I continued
silent and icy. He tried to win a word; he entreated with perseverance,
he waited with patience.

"Justine Marie is a good girl," said he, "docile and amiable; not
quick--but you will like her."

"I think not. I think she must not come here."

Such was my speech.

"Do you wish to puzzle me? Do you know her? But, in truth, there _is_
something. Again you are pale as that statue. Rely on Paul Carlos; tell
him the grief."

His chair touched mine; his hand, quietly advanced, turned me towards
him.

"Do you know Marie Justine?" said he again.

The name re-pronounced by his lips overcame me unaccountably. It did
not prostrate--no, it stirred me up, running with haste and heat
through my veins--recalling an hour of quick pain, many days and nights
of heart-sickness. Near me as he now sat, strongly and closely as he
had long twined his life in mine--far as had progressed, and near as
was achieved our minds' and affections' assimilation--the very
suggestion of interference, of heart-separation, could be heard only
with a fermenting excitement, an impetuous throe, a disdainful resolve,
an ire, a resistance of which no human eye or cheek could hide the
flame, nor any truth-accustomed human tongue curb the cry.

"I want to tell you something," I said: "I want to tell you all."

"Speak, Lucy; come near; speak. Who prizes you, if I do not? Who is
your friend, if not Emanuel? Speak!"

I spoke. All escaped from my lips. I lacked not words now; fast I
narrated; fluent I told my tale; it streamed on my tongue. I went back
to the night in the park; I mentioned the medicated draught--why it was
given--its goading effect--how it had torn rest from under my head,
shaken me from my couch, carried me abroad with the lure of a vivid yet
solemn fancy--a summer-night solitude on turf, under trees, near a
deep, cool lakelet. I told the scene realized; the crowd, the masques,
the music, the lamps, the splendours, the guns booming afar, the bells
sounding on high. All I had encountered I detailed, all I had
recognised, heard, and seen; how I had beheld and watched himself: how
I listened, how much heard, what conjectured; the whole history, in
brief, summoned to his confidence, rushed thither, truthful, literal,
ardent, bitter.

Still as I narrated, instead of checking, he incited me to proceed he
spurred me by the gesture, the smile, the half-word. Before I had half
done, he held both my hands, he consulted my eyes with a most piercing
glance: there was something in his face which tended neither to calm
nor to put me down; he forgot his own doctrine, he forsook his own
system of repression when I most challenged its exercise. I think I
deserved strong reproof; but when have we our deserts? I merited
severity; he looked indulgence. To my very self I seemed imperious and
unreasonable, for I forbade Justine Marie my door and roof; he smiled,
betraying delight. Warm, jealous, and haughty, I knew not till now that
my nature had such a mood: he gathered me near his heart. I was full of
faults; he took them and me all home. For the moment of utmost mutiny,
he reserved the one deep spell of peace. These words caressed my ear:--

"Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on
earth."

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
Muehler, 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.

 Lucy watches Pere Silas, Madame Beck, and Madame Walravens for a while. The school gossip was that these three had hatched the plan to get M. Paul to leave for Guadalupe. Madame Walravens has had a dowry estate in the West Indies that was not profitable during her financial troubles. It has been cleared of debt and is now available to be made profitable by someone who can run an estate well. Madame Beck knows this and is angling to become Madame Walravens's heir. Pere Silas would like to have a foothold in the Caribbean, for he has a missionary zeal. They need M. Paul to go to Guadalupe and run the estate to make it profitable. After M. Paul has done so, he may return to Villette and live his own life. Though the distance to Guadalupe is far and the climate is hazardous, Lucy learns that these three are willing to let M. Paul risk his life for their own interests. They are talking about "Justine Marie" coming, and Lucy, fearing that she is hallucinating, wonders why they are expecting a dead person. This Justine Marie turns out to be M. Paul's ward and a relative of the Walravens and Madame Beck, named for her dead aunt . She arrives with M. Paul and her aunt and uncle. Lucy, spying through the trees as Madame Beck might have, learns all this and now knows that Justine Marie is not the woman in the portrait or the spectral nun in the garden or grenier-for that nun is much, much taller than short Justine Marie. But Lucy, now seeing M. Paul gay with this party of his friends and relatives, believes that when he returns from the Caribbean he will marry this wealthy heiress. It turns out that M. Paul has changed his travel plans and is leaving on a different ship in a few days. Lucy must return to the dormitory before she is caught. As she walks home in the dark, a carriage goes swiftly by her and a white handkerchief is waved out the window. She does not know who has waved at her, and she hopes that she has not been discovered. When she reaches her own bed she finds the ghostly nun's clothing with a note that says "The nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe her wardrobe. She will be seen in the Rue Fossette no more." Lucy notices that the clothing is too long for the height of any woman that she knows, so it must have been worn by a man. But she does not know of any man who would do such a fearful thing as a false haunting. Relieved, however, that the nun was never a ghost or spirit, she bundles up the clothes under her pillow and goes to sleep. In Chapter XL, "The Happy Pair," Ginevra Fanshawe has disappeared. Mrs. Cholmondeley is blamed for it, but Lucy remembers the waving handkerchief and guesses the truth: Ginevra has eloped with the Count De Hamal. Lucy learns from Ginevra's uncle M. de Bassompierre that the Count has large gambling debts, and actually the Count is liable to prosecution for the abduction of a minor. Since Ginevra is underage, too, the two are not even legally married. It is a scandalous affair, but Lucy is not surprised; Ginevra is a flibbertigibbet. Lucy receives a letter from Ginevra explaining how De Hamal assumed the disguise of the ghostly nun in order to visit Ginevra. They would meet in the attic where Lucy first saw him, getting in by means of the skylight. Ginevra is now a Countess like her cousin Polly. It appears that a large part of Ginevra's motivation in elopement was to spite both Dr. John and Paulina, for in Ginevra's twisted mind they have wronged her by being in love with each other. That neither Dr. John nor Polly cares what Ginevra has done does not seem to enter her mind. Ginevra eventually apologizes to Lucy about the ghostly visitation, and she remains a correspondent with Lucy over the years. She and the Count live in Europe beset by debt and scandal. As Chapter XLI, "Faubourg Clotilde," opens, Lucy is worried that M. Paul still will not come to say goodbye. Finally he comes to see her. He is sad to see that she looks ill and has been very unhappy. Another histrionic scene occurs when Madame Beck interrupts and tries to draw M. Paul away. Lucy cries out, "My heart will break," and M. Paul sternly tells Madame to leave. Madame tells him that he must remember his duties, which he says he knows. Madame is intractable, and M. Paul has to shout at her and slap her before she will leave. Lucy tells him that she was worried that he would have left without saying goodbye. He says that he will prove to her that he has not forgotten her and that he is her true friend. They go walking, and he tells Lucy that he thought of her constantly while they were apart. Lucy, though now feeling happy, is very pale, and he is worried for her. She worriedly asks him if her face displeases him so much. He tells her firmly that he likes her appearance. Lucy, for the first time in her life, does not care what the rest of the world thinks about how she looks, so long as she pleases M. Paul. At Rue Fossette it is very likely that M. Paul's letters to Lucy from Guadalupe will be intercepted or destroyed by Madame and her spies. M. Paul does not want to think of her there missing him and not getting his letters. M. Paul has brought them on their walk to a new part of town called the Faubourg Clotilde. They go to a pretty new building, and after a few minutes it becomes clear that this building has been taken by M. Paul for Lucy to use as a school. All this time M. Paul has been working to create a new school for Lucy to run herself. He was afraid his face would give away the surprise if he saw her before he gave her the keys and the prospectus with her name announcing the new school. Her job now is to maintain her health and to run the school well while he is away, for he plans to come back in a few years. Lucy and M. Paul dine on the balcony, and he tells her about the house. M. Miret, who found Lucy a seat at the fete, is her landlord, and his daughters will be her first students. When M. Paul tells her that his ward Justine Marie should enroll, too, Lucy reveals that she saw and heard him and Justine Marie and the rest of the family at the fete. She is jealous, believing that he wants to marry her. The two share a tender scene in which he tells her how he loves her--and that when he returns, they will be married. Justine Marie is already engaged to a German, and M. Paul had only ever thought of her as his ward. Back outside Rue Fossette, Lucy reflects that she once thought him harsh and strange, but that love has changed her opinion of him and indeed of herself. M. Paul pledges to marry her when he returns, and they part. He sails the next day. The short final chapter, "Finis," tells of Lucy's success at the school. She was happiest while M. Paul was away when she was building up the school and enjoying her independence and her own work. She makes a library in the Faubourg Clotilde house for M. Paul, and she puts in the plants he likes. Her school does well, and when she receives an unexpected bequest of one hundred pounds from Mr. Marchmont , she uses it to procure the building next door and make the day school into a boarding school. Lucy has learned that a large part of happiness is working for something not only for herself but for others. She gets long letters from M. Paul, and he says that she should remain a Protestant and that he respects and loves that characteristic of hers. At the end of three years, M. Paul's ship is due. Lucy sees horrible storm clouds coming, and she prays that his ship is watched over by God. Lucy never tells us what happens to the ship, but it is clear that M. Paul does not make it home alive. It is the fault, of course, of the selfish and grasping Madame Beck, Madame Malravens, and Pere Silas, who all end up having lived long and prosperous lives.

