Chapter: CHAPTER XIV.

THE FETE.


As soon as Georgette was well, Madame sent her away into the country. I
was sorry; I loved the child, and her loss made me poorer than before.
But I must not complain. I lived in a house full of robust life; I
might have had companions, and I chose solitude. Each of the teachers
in turn made me overtures of special intimacy; I tried them all. One I
found to be an honest woman, but a narrow thinker, a coarse feeler, and
an egotist. The second was a Parisienne, externally refined--at heart,
corrupt--without a creed, without a principle, without an affection:
having penetrated the outward crust of decorum in this character, you
found a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion for presents; and,
in this point, the third teacher--a person otherwise characterless and
insignificant--closely resembled her. This last-named had also one
other distinctive property--that of avarice. In her reigned the love of
money for its own sake. The sight of a piece of gold would bring into
her eyes a green glisten, singular to witness. She once, as a mark of
high favour, took me up-stairs, and, opening a secret door, showed me a
hoard--a mass of coarse, large coin--about fifteen guineas, in
five-franc pieces. She loved this hoard as a bird loves its eggs. These
were her savings. She would come and talk to me about them with an
infatuated and persevering dotage, strange to behold in a person not
yet twenty-five.

The Parisienne, on the other hand, was prodigal and profligate (in
disposition, that is: as to action, I do not know). That latter quality
showed its snake-head to me but once, peeping out very cautiously. A
curious kind of reptile it seemed, judging from the glimpse I got; its
novelty whetted my curiosity: if it would have come out boldly, perhaps
I might philosophically have stood my ground, and coolly surveyed the
long thing from forked tongue to scaly tail-tip; but it merely rustled
in the leaves of a bad novel; and, on encountering a hasty and
ill-advised demonstration of wrath, recoiled and vanished, hissing. She
hated me from that day.

This Parisienne was always in debt; her salary being anticipated, not
only in dress, but in perfumes, cosmetics, confectionery, and
condiments. What a cold, callous epicure she was in all things! I see
her now. Thin in face and figure, sallow in complexion, regular in
features, with perfect teeth, lips like a thread, a large, prominent
chin, a well-opened, but frozen eye, of light at once craving and
ingrate. She mortally hated work, and loved what she called pleasure;
being an insipid, heartless, brainless dissipation of time.

Madame Beck knew this woman's character perfectly well. She once talked
to me about her, with an odd mixture of discrimination, indifference,
and antipathy. I asked why she kept her in the establishment. She
answered plainly, "because it suited her interest to do so;" and
pointed out a fact I had already noticed, namely, that Mademoiselle St.
Pierre possessed, in an almost unique degree, the power of keeping
order amongst her undisciplined ranks of scholars. A certain petrifying
influence accompanied and surrounded her: without passion, noise, or
violence, she held them in check as a breezeless frost-air might still
a brawling stream. She was of little use as far as communication of
knowledge went, but for strict surveillance and maintenance of rules
she was invaluable. "Je sais bien qu'elle n'a pas de principes, ni,
peut-etre, de moeurs," admitted Madame frankly; but added with
philosophy, "son maintien en classe est toujours convenable et rempli
meme d'une certaine dignite: c'est tout ce qu'il faut. Ni les eleves ni
les parents ne regardent plus loin; ni, par consequent, moi non plus."

       *       *       *       *       *

A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains
were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism
pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was
permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each
mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from
dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized
and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the CHURCH strove to bring
up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale,
joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. "Eat, drink, and live!"
she says. "Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their
cure--guide their course: I guarantee their final fate." A bargain, in
which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers
the same terms: "All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it;
for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If
thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!"

About this time--in the ripest glow of summer--Madame Beck's house
became as merry a place as a school could well be. All day long the
broad folding-doors and the two-leaved casements stood wide open:
settled sunshine seemed naturalized in the atmosphere; clouds were far
off, sailing away beyond sea, resting, no doubt, round islands such as
England--that dear land of mists--but withdrawn wholly from the drier
continent. We lived far more in the garden than under a roof: classes
were held, and meals partaken of, in the "grand berceau." Moreover,
there was a note of holiday preparation, which almost turned freedom
into licence. The autumnal long vacation was but two months distant;
but before that, a great day--an important ceremony--none other than
the fete of Madame--awaited celebration.

The conduct of this fete devolved chiefly on Mademoiselle St. Pierre:
Madame herself being supposed to stand aloof, disinterestedly
unconscious of what might be going forward in her honour. Especially,
she never knew, never in the least suspected, that a subscription was
annually levied on the whole school for the purchase of a handsome
present. The polite tact of the reader will please to leave out of the
account a brief, secret consultation on this point in Madame's own
chamber.

"What will you have this year?" was asked by her Parisian lieutenant.

"Oh, no matter! Let it alone. Let the poor children keep their francs,"
And Madame looked benign and modest.

The St. Pierre would here protrude her chin; she knew Madame by heart;
she always called her airs of "bonte"--"des grimaces." She never even
professed to respect them one instant.

"Vite!" she would say coldly. "Name the article. Shall it be jewellery
or porcelain, haberdashery or silver?"

"Eh bien! Deux ou trois cuillers, et autant de fourchettes en argent."

And the result was a handsome case, containing 300 francs worth of
plate.

The programme of the fete-day's proceedings comprised: Presentation of
plate, collation in the garden, dramatic performance (with pupils and
teachers for actors), a dance and supper. Very gorgeous seemed the
effect of the whole to me, as I well remember. Zelie St. Pierre
understood these things and managed them ably.

The play was the main point; a month's previous drilling being there
required. The choice, too, of the actors required knowledge and care;
then came lessons in elocution, in attitude, and then the fatigue of
countless rehearsals. For all this, as may well be supposed, St. Pierre
did not suffice: other management, other accomplishments than hers were
requisite here. They were supplied in the person of a master--M. Paul
Emanuel, professor of literature. It was never my lot to be present at
the histrionic lessons of M. Paul, but I often saw him as he crossed
the _carre_ (a square hall between the dwelling-house and
school-house). I heard him, too, in the warm evenings, lecturing with
open doors, and his name, with anecdotes of him, resounded in ones ears
from all sides. Especially our former acquaintance, Miss Ginevra
Fanshawe,--who had been selected to take a prominent part in the
play--used, in bestowing upon me a large portion of her leisure, to
lard her discourse with frequent allusions to his sayings and doings.
She esteemed him hideously plain, and used to profess herself
frightened almost into hysterics at the sound of his step or voice. A
dark little man he certainly was; pungent and austere. Even to me he
seemed a harsh apparition, with his close-shorn, black head, his broad,
sallow brow, his thin cheek, his wide and quivering nostril, his
thorough glance, and hurried bearing. Irritable he was; one heard that,
as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders.
Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur actresses with a
passion of impatience at their falseness of conception, their coldness
of emotion, their feebleness of delivery. "Ecoutez!" he would cry; and
then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when,
mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a
Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce hiss
of rage, rewarded the tame echo.

"Vous n'etes donc que des poupees," I heard him thunder. "Vous n'avez
pas de passions--vous autres. Vous ne sentez donc rien? Votre chair est
de neige, votre sang de glace! Moi, je veux que tout cela s'allume,
qu'il ait une vie, une ame!"

Vain resolve! And when he at last found it _was_ vain, he suddenly
broke the whole business down. Hitherto he had been teaching them a
grand tragedy; he tore the tragedy in morsels, and came next day with a
compact little comic trifle. To this they took more kindly; he
presently knocked it all into their smooth round pates.

Mademoiselle St. Pierre always presided at M. Emanuel's lessons, and I
was told that the polish of her manner, her seeming attention, her tact
and grace, impressed that gentleman very favourably. She had, indeed,
the art of pleasing, for a given time, whom she would; but the feeling
would not last: in an hour it was dried like dew, vanished like
gossamer.

The day preceding Madame's fete was as much a holiday as the fete
itself. It was devoted to clearing out, cleaning, arranging and
decorating the three schoolrooms. All within-doors was the gayest
bustle; neither up-stairs nor down could a quiet, isolated person find
rest for the sole of her foot; accordingly, for my part, I took refuge
in the garden. The whole day did I wander or sit there alone, finding
warmth in the sun, shelter among the trees, and a sort of companionship
in my own thoughts. I well remember that I exchanged but two sentences
that day with any living being: not that I felt solitary; I was glad to
be quiet. For a looker-on, it sufficed to pass through the rooms once
or twice, observe what changes were being wrought, how a green-room and
a dressing-room were being contrived, a little stage with scenery
erected, how M. Paul Emanuel, in conjunction with Mademoiselle St.
Pierre, was directing all, and how an eager band of pupils, amongst
them Ginevra Fanshawe, were working gaily under his control.

The great day arrived. The sun rose hot and unclouded, and hot and
unclouded it burned on till evening. All the doors and all the windows
were set open, which gave a pleasant sense of summer freedom--and
freedom the most complete seemed indeed the order of the day. Teachers
and pupils descended to breakfast in dressing-gowns and curl-papers:
anticipating "avec delices" the toilette of the evening, they seemed to
take a pleasure in indulging that forenoon in a luxury of slovenliness;
like aldermen fasting in preparation for a feast. About nine o'clock
A.M., an important functionary, the "coiffeur," arrived. Sacrilegious
to state, he fixed his head-quarters in the oratory, and there, in
presence of _benitier_, candle, and crucifix, solemnised the mysteries
of his art. Each girl was summoned in turn to pass through his hands;
emerging from them with head as smooth as a shell, intersected by
faultless white lines, and wreathed about with Grecian plaits that
shone as if lacquered. I took my turn with the rest, and could hardly
believe what the glass said when I applied to it for information
afterwards; the lavished garlandry of woven brown hair amazed me--I
feared it was not all my own, and it required several convincing pulls
to give assurance to the contrary. I then acknowledged in the coiffeur
a first-rate artist--one who certainly made the most of indifferent
materials.

The oratory closed, the dormitory became the scene of ablutions,
arrayings and bedizenings curiously elaborate. To me it was, and ever
must be an enigma, how they contrived to spend so much time in doing so
little. The operation seemed close, intricate, prolonged: the result
simple. A clear white muslin dress, a blue sash (the Virgin's colours),
a pair of white, or straw-colour kid gloves--such was the gala uniform,
to the assumption whereof that houseful of teachers and pupils devoted
three mortal hours. But though simple, it must be allowed the array was
perfect--perfect in fashion, fit, and freshness; every head being also
dressed with exquisite nicety, and a certain compact taste--suiting the
full, firm comeliness of Labassecourien contours, though too stiff for
any more flowing and flexible style of beauty--the general effect was,
on the whole, commendable.

In beholding this diaphanous and snowy mass, I well remember feeling
myself to be a mere shadowy spot on a field of light; the courage was
not in me to put on a transparent white dress: something thin I must
wear--the weather and rooms being too hot to give substantial fabrics
sufferance, so I had sought through a dozen shops till I lit upon a
crape-like material of purple-gray--the colour, in short, of dun mist,
lying on a moor in bloom. My _tailleuse_ had kindly made it as well as
she could: because, as she judiciously observed, it was "si triste--si
pen voyant," care in the fashion was the more imperative: it was well
she took this view of the matter, for I, had no flower, no jewel to
relieve it: and, what was more, I had no natural rose of complexion.

We become oblivious of these deficiencies in the uniform routine of
daily drudgery, but they _will_ force upon us their unwelcome blank on
those bright occasions when beauty should shine.

However, in this same gown of shadow, I felt at home and at ease; an
advantage I should not have enjoyed in anything more brilliant or
striking. Madame Beck, too, kept me in countenance; her dress was
almost as quiet as mine, except that she wore a bracelet, and a large
brooch bright with gold and fine stones. We chanced to meet on the
stairs, and she gave me a nod and smile of approbation. Not that she
thought I was looking well--a point unlikely to engage her
interest--but she considered me dressed "convenablement," "decemment,"
and la Convenance et la Decence were the two calm deities of Madame's
worship. She even paused, laid on my shoulder her gloved hand, holding
an embroidered and perfumed handkerchief, and confided to my ear a
sarcasm on the other teachers (whom she had just been complimenting to
their faces). "Nothing so absurd," she said, "as for des femmes mures
'to dress themselves like girls of fifteen'--quant a la. St. Pierre,
elle a l'air d'une vieille coquette qui fait l'ingenue."

Being dressed at least a couple of hours before anybody else, I felt a
pleasure in betaking myself--not to the garden, where servants were
busy propping up long tables, placing seats, and spreading cloths in
readiness for the collation but to the schoolrooms, now empty, quiet,
cool, and clean; their walls fresh stained, their planked floors fresh
scoured and scarce dry; flowers fresh gathered adorning the recesses in
pots, and draperies, fresh hung, beautifying the great windows.

Withdrawing to the first classe, a smaller and neater room than the
others, and taking from the glazed bookcase, of which I kept the key, a
volume whose title promised some interest, I sat down to read. The
glass-door of this "classe," or schoolroom, opened into the large
berceau; acacia-boughs caressed its panes, as they stretched across to
meet a rose-bush blooming by the opposite lintel: in this rose-bush
bees murmured busy and happy. I commenced reading. Just as the stilly
hum, the embowering shade, the warm, lonely calm of my retreat were
beginning to steal meaning from the page, vision from my eyes, and to
lure me along the track of reverie, down into some deep dell of
dreamland--just then, the sharpest ring of the street-door bell to
which that much-tried instrument had ever thrilled, snatched me back to
consciousness.

Now the bell had been ringing all the morning, as workmen, or servants,
or _coiffeurs_, or _tailleuses_, went and came on their several
errands. Moreover, there was good reason to expect it would ring all
the afternoon, since about one hundred externes were yet to arrive in
carriages or fiacres: nor could it be expected to rest during the
evening, when parents and friends would gather thronging to the play.
Under these circumstances, a ring--even a sharp ring--was a matter of
course: yet this particular peal had an accent of its own, which chased
my dream, and startled my book from my knee.

I was stooping to pick up this last, when--firm, fast, straight--right
on through vestibule--along corridor, across carre, through first
division, second division, grand salle--strode a step, quick, regular,
intent. The closed door of the first classe--my sanctuary--offered no
obstacle; it burst open, and a paletot and a bonnet grec filled the
void; also two eyes first vaguely struck upon, and then hungrily dived
into me.

"C'est cela!" said a voice. "Je la connais: c'est l'Anglaise. Tant pis.
Toute Anglaise, et, par consequent, toute begueule qu'elle soit--elle
fera mon affaire, ou je saurai pourquoi."

Then, with a certain stern politeness (I suppose he thought I had not
caught the drift of his previous uncivil mutterings), and in a jargon
the most execrable that ever was heard, "Meess----, play you must: I am
planted there."

"What can I do for you, M. Paul Emanuel?" I inquired: for M. Paul
Emanuel it was, and in a state of no little excitement.

"Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the
prude. I read your skull that night you came; I see your moyens: play
you can; play you must."

"But how, M. Paul? What do you mean?"

"There is no time to be lost," he went on, now speaking in French; "and
let us thrust to the wall all reluctance, all excuses, all minauderies.
You must take a part."

"In the vaudeville?"

"In the vaudeville. You have said it."

I gasped, horror-struck. _What_ did the little man mean?

"Listen!" he said. "The case shall be stated, and you shall then answer
me Yes, or No; and according to your answer shall I ever after estimate
you."

The scarce-suppressed impetus of a most irritable nature glowed in his
cheek, fed with sharp shafts his glances, a nature--the injudicious,
the mawkish, the hesitating, the sullen, the affected, above all, the
unyielding, might quickly render violent and implacable. Silence and
attention was the best balm to apply: I listened.

"The whole matter is going to fail," he began. "Louise Vanderkelkov has
fallen ill--at least so her ridiculous mother asserts; for my part, I
feel sure she might play if she would: it is only good-will that lacks.
She was charged with a _role_, as you know, or do _not_ know--it is
equal: without that _role_ the play is stopped. There are now but a few
hours in which to learn it: not a girl in this school would hear
reason, and accept the task. Forsooth, it is not an interesting, not an
amiable, part; their vile _amour-propre_--that base quality of which
women have so much--would revolt from it. Englishwomen are either the
best or the worst of their sex. Dieu sait que je les deteste comme la
peste, ordinairement" (this between his recreant teeth). "I apply to an
Englishwoman to rescue me. What is her answer--Yes, or No?"

A thousand objections rushed into my mind. The foreign language, the
limited time, the public display... Inclination recoiled, Ability
faltered, Self-respect (that "vile quality") trembled. "Non, non, non!"
said all these; but looking up at M. Paul, and seeing in his vexed,
fiery, and searching eye, a sort of appeal behind all its menace, my
lips dropped the word "oui". For a moment his rigid countenance relaxed
with a quiver of content: quickly bent up again, however, he went on,--

"Vite a l'ouvrage! Here is the book; here is your _role_: read." And I
read. He did not commend; at some passages he scowled and stamped. He
gave me a lesson: I diligently imitated. It was a disagreeable part--a
man's--an empty-headed fop's. One could put into it neither heart nor
soul: I hated it. The play--a mere trifle--ran chiefly on the efforts
of a brace of rivals to gain the hand of a fair coquette. One lover was
called the "Ours," a good and gallant but unpolished man, a sort of
diamond in the rough; the other was a butterfly, a talker, and a
traitor: and I was to be the butterfly, talker, and traitor.

I did my best--which was bad, I know: it provoked M. Paul; he fumed.
Putting both hands to the work, I endeavoured to do better than my
best; I presume he gave me credit for good intentions; he professed to
be partially content. "Ca ira!" he cried; and as voices began sounding
from the garden, and white dresses fluttering among the trees, he
added: "You must withdraw: you must be alone to learn this. Come with
me."

Without being allowed time or power to deliberate, I found myself in
the same breath convoyed along as in a species of whirlwind, up-stairs,
up two pair of stairs, nay, actually up three (for this fiery little
man seemed as by instinct to know his way everywhere); to the solitary
and lofty attic was I borne, put in and locked in, the key being, in
the door, and that key he took with him and vanished.

The attic was no pleasant place: I believe he did not know how
unpleasant it was, or he never would have locked me in with so little
ceremony. In this summer weather, it was hot as Africa; as in winter,
it was always cold as Greenland. Boxes and lumber filled it; old
dresses draped its unstained wall--cobwebs its unswept ceiling. Well
was it known to be tenanted by rats, by black beetles, and by
cockroaches--nay, rumour affirmed that the ghostly Nun of the garden
had once been seen here. A partial darkness obscured one end, across
which, as for deeper mystery, an old russet curtain was drawn, by way
of screen to a sombre band of winter cloaks, pendent each from its pin,
like a malefactor from his gibbet. From amongst these cloaks, and
behind that curtain, the Nun was said to issue. I did not believe this,
nor was I troubled by apprehension thereof; but I saw a very dark and
large rat, with a long tail, come gliding out from that squalid alcove;
and, moreover, my eye fell on many a black-beetle, dotting the floor.
These objects discomposed me more, perhaps, than it would be wise to
say, as also did the dust, lumber, and stifling heat of the place. The
last inconvenience would soon have become intolerable, had I not found
means to open and prop up the skylight, thus admitting some freshness.
Underneath this aperture I pushed a large empty chest, and having
mounted upon it a smaller box, and wiped from both the dust, I gathered
my dress (my best, the reader must remember, and therefore a legitimate
object of care) fastidiously around me, ascended this species of
extempore throne, and being seated, commenced the acquisition of my
task; while I learned, not forgetting to keep a sharp look-out on the
black-beetles and cockroaches, of which, more even, I believe, than of
the rats, I sat in mortal dread.

My impression at first was that I had undertaken what it really was
impossible to perform, and I simply resolved to do my best and be
resigned to fail. I soon found, however, that one part in so short a
piece was not more than memory could master at a few hours' notice. I
learned and learned on, first in a whisper, and then aloud. Perfectly
secure from human audience, I acted my part before the garret-vermin.
Entering into its emptiness, frivolity, and falsehood, with a spirit
inspired by scorn and impatience, I took my revenge on this "fat," by
making him as fatuitous as I possibly could.

In this exercise the afternoon passed: day began to glide into evening;
and I, who had eaten nothing since breakfast, grew excessively hungry.
Now I thought of the collation, which doubtless they were just then
devouring in the garden far below. (I had seen in the vestibule a
basketful of small _pates a la creme_, than which nothing in the whole
range of cookery seemed to me better). A _pate_, or a square of cake,
it seemed to me would come very _apropos;_ and as my relish for those
dainties increased, it began to appear somewhat hard that I should pass
my holiday, fasting and in prison. Remote as was the attic from the
street-door and vestibule, yet the ever-tinkling bell was faintly
audible here; and also the ceaseless roll of wheels, on the tormented
pavement. I knew that the house and garden were thronged, and that all
was gay and glad below; here it began to grow dusk: the beetles were
fading from my sight; I trembled lest they should steal on me a march,
mount my throne unseen, and, unsuspected, invade my skirts. Impatient
and apprehensive, I recommenced the rehearsal of my part merely to kill
time. Just as I was concluding, the long-delayed rattle of the key in
the lock came to my ear--no unwelcome sound. M. Paul (I could just see
through the dusk that it _was_ M. Paul, for light enough still lingered
to show the velvet blackness of his close-shorn head, and the sallow
ivory of his brow) looked in.

"Brava!" cried he, holding the door open and remaining at the
threshold. "J'ai tout entendu. C'est assez bien. Encore!"

A moment I hesitated.

"Encore!" said he sternly. "Et point de grimaces! A bas la timidite!"

Again I went through the part, but not half so well as I had spoken it
alone.

"Enfin, elle sait," said he, half dissatisfied, "and one cannot be
fastidious or exacting under the circumstances." Then he added, "You
may yet have twenty minutes for preparation: au revoir!" And he was
going.

"Monsieur," I called out, taking courage.

"Eh bien! Qu'est-ce que c'est, Mademoiselle?"

"J'ai bien faim."

"Comment, vous avez faim! Et la collation?"

"I know nothing about it. I have not seen it, shut up here."

"Ah! C'est vrai," cried he.

In a moment my throne was abdicated, the attic evacuated; an inverse
repetition of the impetus which had brought me up into the attic,
instantly took me down--down--down to the very kitchen. I thought I
should have gone to the cellar. The cook was imperatively ordered to
produce food, and I, as imperatively, was commanded to eat. To my great
joy this food was limited to coffee and cake: I had feared wine and
sweets, which I did not like. How he guessed that I should like a
_petit pate a la creme_ I cannot tell; but he went out and procured me
one from some quarter. With considerable willingness I ate and drank,
keeping the _petit pate_ till the last, as a _bonne bouche_. M. Paul
superintended my repast, and almost forced upon me more than I could
swallow.

"A la bonne heure," he cried, when I signified that I really could take
no more, and, with uplifted hands, implored to be spared the additional
roll on which he had just spread butter. "You will set me down as a
species of tyrant and Bluebeard, starving women in a garret; whereas,
after all, I am no such thing. Now, Mademoiselle, do you feel courage
and strength to appear?"

I said, I thought I did; though, in truth, I was perfectly confused,
and could hardly tell how I felt: but this little man was of the order
of beings who must not be opposed, unless you possessed an all-dominant
force sufficient to crush him at once.

"Come then," said he, offering his hand.

I gave him mine, and he set off with a rapid walk, which obliged me to
run at his side in order to keep pace. In the carre he stopped a
moment: it was lit with large lamps; the wide doors of the classes were
open, and so were the equally wide garden-doors; orange-trees in tubs,
and tall flowers in pots, ornamented these portals on each side; groups
of ladies and gentlemen in evening-dress stood and walked amongst the
flowers. Within, the long vista of the school-rooms presented a
thronging, undulating, murmuring, waving, streaming multitude, all
rose, and blue, and half translucent white. There were lustres burning
overhead; far off there was a stage, a solemn green curtain, a row of
footlights.

"Nest-ce pas que c'est beau?" demanded my companion.

I should have said it was, but my heart got up into my throat. M. Paul
discovered this, and gave me a side-scowl and a little shake for my
pains.

"I will do my best, but I wish it was over," said I; then I asked: "Are
we to walk through that crowd?"

"By no means: I manage matters better: we pass through the
garden--here."

In an instant we were out of doors: the cool, calm night revived me
somewhat. It was moonless, but the reflex from the many glowing windows
lit the court brightly, and even the alleys--dimly. Heaven was
cloudless, and grand with the quiver of its living fires. How soft are
the nights of the Continent! How bland, balmy, safe! No sea-fog; no
chilling damp: mistless as noon, and fresh as morning.

Having crossed court and garden, we reached the glass door of the first
classe. It stood open, like all other doors that night; we passed, and
then I was ushered into a small cabinet, dividing the first classe from
the grand salle. This cabinet dazzled me, it was so full of light: it
deafened me, it was clamorous with voices: it stifled me, it was so
hot, choking, thronged.

"De l'ordre! Du silence!" cried M. Paul. "Is this chaos?", he demanded;
and there was a hush. With a dozen words, and as many gestures, he
turned out half the persons present, and obliged the remnant to fall
into rank. Those left were all in costume: they were the performers,
and this was the green-room. M. Paul introduced me. All stared and some
tittered. It was a surprise: they had not expected the Englishwoman
would play in a _vaudeville_. Ginevra Fanshawe, beautifully dressed for
her part, and looking fascinatingly pretty, turned on me a pair of eyes
as round as beads. In the highest spirit, unperturbed by fear or
bashfulness, delighted indeed at the thought of shining off before
hundreds--my entrance seemed to transfix her with amazement in the
midst of her joy. She would have exclaimed, but M. Paul held her and
all the rest in check.

Having surveyed and criticized the whole troop, he turned to me.

"You, too, must be dressed for your part."

"Dressed--dressed like a man!" exclaimed Zelie St. Pierre, darting
forwards; adding with officiousness, "I will dress her myself."

To be dressed like a man did not please, and would not suit me. I had
consented to take a man's name and part; as to his dress--_halte la!_
No. I would keep my own dress, come what might. M. Paul might storm,
might rage: I would keep my own dress. I said so, with a voice as
resolute in intent, as it was low, and perhaps unsteady in utterance.

He did not immediately storm or rage, as I fully thought he would he
stood silent. But Zelie again interposed.

"She will make a capital _petit-maitre_. Here are the garments,
all--all complete: somewhat too large, but--I will arrange all that.
Come, chere amie--belle Anglaise!"

And she sneered, for I was not "belle." She seized my hand, she was
drawing me away. M. Paul stood impassable--neutral.

"You must not resist," pursued St. Pierre--for resist I did. "You will
spoil all, destroy the mirth of the piece, the enjoyment of the
company, sacrifice everything to your _amour-propre_. This would be too
bad--monsieur will never permit this?"

She sought his eye. I watched, likewise, for a glance. He gave her one,
and then he gave me one. "Stop!" he said slowly, arresting St. Pierre,
who continued her efforts to drag me after her. Everybody awaited the
decision. He was not angry, not irritated; I perceived that, and took
heart.

"You do not like these clothes?" he asked, pointing to the masculine
vestments.

"I don't object to some of them, but I won't have them all."

"How must it be, then? How accept a man's part, and go on the stage
dressed as a woman? This is an amateur affair, it is true--a
_vaudeville de pensionnat;_ certain modifications I might sanction, yet
something you must have to announce you as of the nobler sex."

"And I will, Monsieur; but it must be arranged in my own way: nobody
must meddle; the things must not be forced upon me. Just let me dress
myself."

Monsieur, without another word, took the costume from St. Pierre, gave
it to me, and permitted me to pass into the dressing-room. Once alone,
I grew calm, and collectedly went to work. Retaining my woman's garb
without the slightest retrenchment, I merely assumed, in addition, a
little vest, a collar, and cravat, and a paletot of small dimensions;
the whole being the costume of a brother of one of the pupils. Having
loosened my hair out of its braids, made up the long back-hair close,
and brushed the front hair to one side, I took my hat and gloves in my
hand and came out. M. Paul was waiting, and so were the others. He
looked at me. "That may pass in a pensionnat," he pronounced. Then
added, not unkindly, "Courage, mon ami! Un peu de sangfroid--un peu
d'aplomb, M. Lucien, et tout ira bien."

St. Pierre sneered again, in her cold snaky manner.

I was irritable, because excited, and I could not help turning upon her
and saying, that if she were not a lady and I a gentleman, I should
feel disposed to call her out.

"After the play, after the play," said M. Paul. "I will then divide my
pair of pistols between you, and we will settle the dispute according
to form: it will only be the old quarrel of France and England."

But now the moment approached for the performance to commence. M. Paul,
setting us before him, harangued us briefly, like a general addressing
soldiers about to charge. I don't know what he said, except that he
recommended each to penetrate herself with a sense of her personal
insignificance. God knows I thought this advice superfluous for some of
us. A bell tinkled. I and two more were ushered on to the stage. The
bell tinkled again. I had to speak the very first words.

"Do not look at the crowd, nor think of it," whispered M. Paul in my
ear. "Imagine yourself in the garret, acting to the rats."

He vanished. The curtain drew up--shrivelled to the ceiling: the bright
lights, the long room, the gay throng, burst upon us. I thought of the
black-beetles, the old boxes, the worm-eaten bureau. I said my say
badly; but I said it. That first speech was the difficulty; it revealed
to me this fact, that it was not the crowd I feared so much as my own
voice. Foreigners and strangers, the crowd were nothing to me. Nor did
I think of them. When my tongue once got free, and my voice took its
true pitch, and found its natural tone, I thought of nothing but the
personage I represented--and of M. Paul, who was listening, watching,
prompting in the side-scenes.

By-and-by, feeling the right power come--the spring demanded gush and
rise inwardly--I became sufficiently composed to notice my
fellow-actors. Some of them played very well; especially Ginevra
Fanshawe, who had to coquette between two suitors, and managed
admirably: in fact she was in her element. I observed that she once or
twice threw a certain marked fondness and pointed partiality into her
manner towards me--the fop. With such emphasis and animation did she
favour me, such glances did she dart out into the listening and
applauding crowd, that to me--who knew her--it presently became evident
she was acting _at_ some one; and I followed her eye, her smile, her
gesture, and ere long discovered that she had at least singled out a
handsome and distinguished aim for her shafts; full in the path of
those arrows--taller than other spectators, and therefore more sure to
receive them--stood, in attitude quiet but intent, a well-known
form--that of Dr. John.

The spectacle seemed somehow suggestive. There was language in Dr.
John's look, though I cannot tell what he said; it animated me: I drew
out of it a history; I put my idea into the part I performed; I threw
it into my wooing of Ginevra. In the "Ours," or sincere lover, I saw
Dr. John. Did I pity him, as erst? No, I hardened my heart, rivalled
and out-rivalled him. I knew myself but a fop, but where _he_ was
outcast _I_ could please. Now I know acted as if wishful and resolute
to win and conquer. Ginevra seconded me; between us we half-changed the
nature of the _role_, gilding it from top to toe. Between the acts M.
Paul, told us he knew not what possessed us, and half expostulated.
"C'est peut-etre plus beau que votre modele," said he, "mais ce n'est
pas juste." I know not what possessed me either; but somehow, my
longing was to eclipse the "Ours," _i.e._, Dr. John. Ginevra was
tender; how could I be otherwise than chivalric? Retaining the letter,
I recklessly altered the spirit of the _role_. Without heart, without
interest, I could not play it at all. It must be played--in went the
yearned-for seasoning--thus favoured, I played it with relish.

What I felt that night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and
do, than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. Cold,
reluctant, apprehensive, I had accepted a part to please another: ere
long, warming, becoming interested, taking courage, I acted to please
myself. Yet the next day, when I thought it over, I quite disapproved
of these amateur performances; and though glad that I had obliged M.
Paul, and tried my own strength for once, I took a firm resolution,
never to be drawn into a similar affair. A keen relish for dramatic
expression had revealed itself as part of my nature; to cherish and
exercise this new-found faculty might gift me with a world of delight,
but it would not do for a mere looker-on at life: the strength and
longing must be put by; and I put them by, and fastened them in with
the lock of a resolution which neither Time nor Temptation has since
picked.

No sooner was the play over, and _well_ over, than the choleric and
arbitrary M. Paul underwent a metamorphosis. His hour of managerial
responsibility past, he at once laid aside his magisterial austerity;
in a moment he stood amongst us, vivacious, kind, and social, shook
hands with us all round, thanked us separately, and announced his
determination that each of us should in turn be his partner in the
coming ball. On his claiming my promise, I told him I did not dance.
"For once I must," was the answer; and if I had not slipped aside and
kept out of his way, he would have compelled me to this second
performance. But I had acted enough for one evening; it was time I
retired into myself and my ordinary life. My dun-coloured dress did
well enough under a paletot on the stage, but would not suit a waltz or
a quadrille. Withdrawing to a quiet nook, whence unobserved I could
observe--the ball, its splendours and its pleasures, passed before me
as a spectacle.

Again Ginevra Fanshawe was the belle, the fairest and the gayest
present; she was selected to open the ball: very lovely she looked,
very gracefully she danced, very joyously she smiled. Such scenes were
her triumphs--she was the child of pleasure. Work or suffering found
her listless and dejected, powerless and repining; but gaiety expanded
her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made
her flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. At all ordinary diet and
plain beverage she would pout; but she fed on creams and ices like a
humming-bird on honey-paste: sweet wine was her element, and sweet cake
her daily bread. Ginevra lived her full life in a ball-room; elsewhere
she drooped dispirited.

Think not, reader, that she thus bloomed and sparkled for the mere sake
of M. Paul, her partner, or that she lavished her best graces that
night for the edification of her companions only, or for that of the
parents and grand-parents, who filled the carre, and lined the
ball-room; under circumstances so insipid and limited, with motives so
chilly and vapid, Ginevra would scarce have deigned to walk one
quadrille, and weariness and fretfulness would have replaced animation
and good-humour, but she knew of a leaven in the otherwise heavy festal
mass which lighted the whole; she tasted a condiment which gave it
zest; she perceived reasons justifying the display of her choicest
attractions.

In the ball-room, indeed, not a single male spectator was to be seen
who was not married and a father--M. Paul excepted--that gentleman,
too, being the sole creature of his sex permitted to lead out a pupil
to the dance; and this exceptional part was allowed him, partly as a
matter of old-established custom (for he was a kinsman of Madame
Beck's, and high in her confidence), partly because he would always
have his own way and do as he pleased, and partly because--wilful,
passionate, partial, as he might be--he was the soul of honour, and
might be trusted with a regiment of the fairest and purest; in perfect
security that under his leadership they would come to no harm. Many of
the girls--it may be noted in parenthesis--were not pure-minded at all,
very much otherwise; but they no more dare betray their natural
coarseness in M. Paul's presence, than they dare tread purposely on his
corns, laugh in his face during a stormy apostrophe, or speak above
their breath while some crisis of irritability was covering his human
visage with the mask of an intelligent tiger. M. Paul, then, might
dance with whom he would--and woe be to the interference which put him
out of step.

Others there were admitted as spectators--with (seeming) reluctance,
through prayers, by influence, under restriction, by special and
difficult exercise of Madame Beck's gracious good-nature, and whom she
all the evening--with her own personal surveillance--kept far aloof at
the remotest, drearest, coldest, darkest side of the carre--a small,
forlorn band of "jeunes gens;" these being all of the best families,
grown-up sons of mothers present, and whose sisters were pupils in the
school. That whole evening was Madame on duty beside these "jeunes
gens"--attentive to them as a mother, but strict with them as a dragon.
There was a sort of cordon stretched before them, which they wearied
her with prayers to be permitted to pass, and just to revive themselves
by one dance with that "belle blonde," or that "jolie brune," or "cette
jeune fille magnifique aux cheveux noirs comme le jais."

"Taisez-vous!" Madame would reply, heroically and inexorably. "Vous ne
passerez pas a moins que ce ne soit sur mon cadavre, et vous ne
danserez qu'avec la nonnette du jardin" (alluding to the legend). And
she majestically walked to and fro along their disconsolate and
impatient line, like a little Bonaparte in a mouse-coloured silk gown.

Madame knew something of the world; Madame knew much of human nature. I
don't think that another directress in Villette would have dared to
admit a "jeune homme" within her walls; but Madame knew that by
granting such admission, on an occasion like the present, a bold stroke
might be struck, and a great point gained.

In the first place, the parents were made accomplices to the deed, for
it was only through their mediation it was brought about. Secondly: the
admission of these rattlesnakes, so fascinating and so dangerous,
served to draw out Madame precisely in her strongest character--that of
a first-rate _surveillante_. Thirdly: their presence furnished a most
piquant ingredient to the entertainment: the pupils knew it, and saw
it, and the view of such golden apples shining afar off, animated them
with a spirit no other circumstance could have kindled. The children's
pleasure spread to the parents; life and mirth circulated quickly round
the ball-room; the "jeunes gens" themselves, though restrained, were
amused: for Madame never permitted them to feel dull--and thus Madame
Beck's fete annually ensured a success unknown to the fete of any other
directress in the land.

I observed that Dr. John was at first permitted to walk at large
through the classes: there was about him a manly, responsible look,
that redeemed his youth, and half-expiated his beauty; but as soon as
the ball began, Madame ran up to him.

"Come, Wolf; come," said she, laughing: "you wear sheep's clothing, but
you must quit the fold notwithstanding. Come; I have a fine menagerie
of twenty here in the carre: let me place you amongst my collection."

"But first suffer me to have one dance with one pupil of my choice."

"Have you the face to ask such a thing? It is madness: it is impiety.
Sortez, sortez, au plus vite."

She drove him before her, and soon had him enclosed within the cordon.

Ginevra being, I suppose, tired with dancing, sought me out in my
retreat. She threw herself on the bench beside me, and (a demonstration
I could very well have dispensed with) cast her arms round my neck.

"Lucy Snowe! Lucy Snowe!" she cried in a somewhat sobbing voice, half
hysterical.

"What in the world is the matter?" I drily said.

"How do I look--how do I look to-night?" she demanded.

"As usual," said I; "preposterously vain."

"Caustic creature! You never have a kind word for me; but in spite of
you, and all other envious detractors, I know I am beautiful; I feel
it, I see it--for there is a great looking-glass in the dressing-room,
where I can view my shape from head to foot. Will you go with me now,
and let us two stand before it?"

"I will, Miss Fanshawe: you shall be humoured even to the top of your
bent."

The dressing-room was very near, and we stepped in. Putting her arm
through mine, she drew me to the mirror. Without resistance
remonstrance, or remark, I stood and let her self-love have its feast
and triumph: curious to see how much it could swallow--whether it was
possible it could feed to satiety--whether any whisper of consideration
for others could penetrate her heart, and moderate its vainglorious
exultation.

Not at all. She turned me and herself round; she viewed us both on all
sides; she smiled, she waved her curls, she retouched her sash, she
spread her dress, and finally, letting go my arm, and curtseying with
mock respect, she said: "I would not be you for a kingdom."

The remark was too _naive_ to rouse anger; I merely said: "Very good."

"And what would _you_ give to be ME?" she inquired.

"Not a bad sixpence--strange as it may sound," I replied. "You are but
a poor creature."

"You don't think so in your heart."

"No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only
occasionally turn you over in my brain."

"Well, but," said she, in an expostulatory tone, "just listen to the
difference of our positions, and then see how happy am I, and how
miserable are you."

"Go on; I listen."

"In the first place: I am the daughter of a gentleman of family, and
though my father is not rich, I have expectations from an uncle. Then,
I am just eighteen, the finest age possible. I have had a continental
education, and though I can't spell, I have abundant accomplishments. I
_am_ pretty; _you_ can't deny that; I may have as many admirers as I
choose. This very night I have been breaking the hearts of two
gentlemen, and it is the dying look I had from one of them just now,
which puts me in such spirits. I do so like to watch them turn red and
pale, and scowl and dart fiery glances at each other, and languishing
ones at me. There is _me_--happy ME; now for _you_, poor soul!

"I suppose you are nobody's daughter, since you took care of little
children when you first came to Villette: you have no relations; you
can't call yourself young at twenty-three; you have no attractive
accomplishments--no beauty. As to admirers, you hardly know what they
are; you can't even talk on the subject: you sit dumb when the other
teachers quote their conquests. I believe you never were in love, and
never will be: you don't know the feeling, and so much the better, for
though you might have your own heart broken, no living heart will you
ever break. Isn't it all true?"

"A good deal of it is true as gospel, and shrewd besides. There must be
good in you, Ginevra, to speak so honestly; that snake, Zelie St.
Pierre, could not utter what you have uttered. Still, Miss Fanshawe,
hapless as I am, according to your showing, sixpence I would not give
to purchase you, body and soul."

"Just because I am not clever, and that is all _you_ think of. Nobody
in the world but you cares for cleverness."

"On the contrary, I consider you _are_ clever, in your way--very smart
indeed. But you were talking of breaking hearts--that edifying
amusement into the merits of which I don't quite enter; pray on whom
does your vanity lead you to think you have done execution to-night?"

She approached her lips to my ear--"Isidore and Alfred de Hamal are
both here?" she whispered.

"Oh! they are? I should like to see them."

"There's a dear creature! your curiosity is roused at last. Follow me,
I will point them out."

She proudly led the way--"But you cannot see them well from the
classes," said she, turning, "Madame keeps them too far off. Let us
cross the garden, enter by the corridor, and get close to them behind:
we shall be scolded if we are seen, but never mind."

For once, I did not mind. Through the garden we went--penetrated into
the corridor by a quiet private entrance, and approaching the _carre_,
yet keeping in the corridor shade, commanded a near view of the band of
"jeunes gens."

I believe I could have picked out the conquering de Hamal even
undirected. He was a straight-nosed, very correct-featured little
dandy. I say _little_ dandy, though he was not beneath the middle
standard in stature; but his lineaments were small, and so were his
hands and feet; and he was pretty and smooth, and as trim as a doll: so
nicely dressed, so nicely curled, so booted and gloved and cravated--he
was charming indeed. I said so. "What, a dear personage!" cried I, and
commended Ginevra's taste warmly; and asked her what she thought de
Hamal might have done with the precious fragments of that heart she had
broken--whether he kept them in a scent-vial, and conserved them in
otto of roses? I observed, too, with deep rapture of approbation, that
the colonel's hands were scarce larger than Miss Fanshawe's own, and
suggested that this circumstance might be convenient, as he could wear
her gloves at a pinch. On his dear curls, I told her I doated: and as
to his low, Grecian brow, and exquisite classic headpiece, I confessed
I had no language to do such perfections justice.

"And if he were your lover?" suggested the cruelly exultant Ginevra.

"Oh! heavens, what bliss!" said I; "but do not be inhuman, Miss
Fanshawe: to put such thoughts into my head is like showing poor
outcast Cain a far, glimpse of Paradise."

"You like him, then?"

"As I like sweets, and jams, and comfits, and conservatory flowers."

Ginevra admired my taste, for all these things were her adoration; she
could then readily credit that they were mine too.

"Now for Isidore," I went on. I own I felt still more curious to see
him than his rival; but Ginevra was absorbed in the latter.

"Alfred was admitted here to-night," said she, "through the influence
of his aunt, Madame la Baronne de Dorlodot; and now, having seen him,
can you not understand why I have been in such spirits all the evening,
and acted so well, and danced with such life, and why I am now happy as
a queen? Dieu! Dieu! It was such good fun to glance first at him and
then at the other, and madden them both."

"But that other--where is he? Show me Isidore."

"I don't like."

"Why not?"

"I am ashamed of him."

"For what reason?"

"Because--because" (in a whisper) "he has such--such whiskers,
orange--red--there now!"

"The murder is out," I subjoined. "Never mind, show him all the same; I
engage not to faint."

She looked round. Just then an English voice spoke behind her and me.

"You are both standing in a draught; you must leave this corridor."

"There is no draught, Dr. John," said I, turning.

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

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

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

"Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing."

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

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

She pushed up her lip, smiled, and nodded.

"Is _that_ Isidore?" I repeated, giving her a shake: I could have given
her a dozen.

"C'est lui-meme," said she. "How coarse he is, compared with the
Colonel-Count! And then--oh ciel!--the whiskers!"

Dr. John now passed on.

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

"Bah! How you run on! I don't understand half you have said."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes: I know her."

"Intimately?"

"Quite as intimately as I wish."

"What have you done with her now?"

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

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

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

"She is so young, so thoroughly artless," said he.

"To me she is an enigma," I responded.

"Is she?" he asked--much interested. "How?"

"It would be difficult to say how--difficult, at least, to tell _you_
how."

"And why me?"

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

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

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

"You know all?"

"I know so much."

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

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

"Still, you can gather some general idea--?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you not a little severe?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





CHAPTER XV.

THE LONG VACATION.


Following Madame Beck's fete, with its three preceding weeks of
relaxation, its brief twelve hours' burst of hilarity and dissipation,
and its one subsequent day of utter languor, came a period of reaction;
two months of real application, of close, hard study. These two months,
being the last of the "annee scolaire," were indeed the only genuine
working months in the year. To them was procrastinated--into them
concentrated, alike by professors, mistresses, and pupils--the main
burden of preparation for the examinations preceding the distribution
of prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in good earnest;
masters and teachers had to set their shoulders to the wheel, to urge
on the backward, and diligently aid and train the more promising. A
showy demonstration--a telling exhibition--must be got up for public
view, and all means were fair to this end.

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

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

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

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

"Ainsi," he began, abruptly fronting and arresting me, "vous allez
troner comme une reine; demain--troner a mes cotes? Sans doute vous
savourez d'avance les delices de l'autorite. Je crois voir en je ne
sais quoi de rayonnante, petite ambitieuse!"

Now the fact was, he happened to be entirely mistaken. I did not--could
not--estimate the admiration or the good opinion of tomorrow's audience
at the same rate he did. Had that audience numbered as many personal
friends and acquaintance for me as for him, I know not how it might
have been: I speak of the case as it stood. On me school-triumphs shed
but a cold lustre. I had wondered--and I wondered now--how it was that
for him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth and hearth-glow.
_He_ cared for them perhaps too much; _I_, probably, too little.
However, I had my own fancies as well as he. I liked, for instance, to
see M. Emanuel jealous; it lit up his nature, and woke his spirit; it
threw all sorts of queer lights and shadows over his dun face, and into
his violet-azure eyes (he used to say that his black hair and blue eyes
were "une de ses beautes"). There was a relish in his anger; it was
artless, earnest, quite unreasonable, but never hypocritical. I uttered
no disclaimer then of the complacency he attributed to me; I merely
asked where the English examination came in--whether at the
commencement or close of the day?

"I hesitate," said he, "whether at the very beginning, before many
persons are come, and when your aspiring nature will not be gratified
by a large audience, or quite at the close, when everybody is tired,
and only a jaded and worn-out attention will be at your service."

"Que vous etes dur, Monsieur!" I said, affecting dejection.

"One ought to be 'dur' with you. You are one of those beings who must
be _kept down_. I know you! I know you! Other people in this house see
you pass, and think that a colourless shadow has gone by. As for me, I
scrutinized your face once, and it sufficed."

"You are satisfied that you understand me?"

Without answering directly, he went on, "Were you not gratified when
you succeeded in that vaudeville? I watched you and saw a passionate
ardour for triumph in your physiognomy. What fire shot into the glance!
Not mere light, but flame: je me tiens pour averti."

"What feeling I had on that occasion, Monsieur--and pardon me, if I
say, you immensely exaggerate both its quality and quantity--was quite
abstract. I did not care for the vaudeville. I hated the part you
assigned me. I had not the slightest sympathy with the audience below
the stage. They are good people, doubtless, but do I know them? Are
they anything to me? Can I care for being brought before their view
again to-morrow? Will the examination be anything but a task to me--a
task I wish well over?"

"Shall I take it out of your hands?"

"With all my heart; if you do not fear failure."

"But I should fail. I only know three phrases of English, and a few
words: par exemple, de sonn, de mone, de stares--est-ce bien dit? My
opinion is that it would be better to give up the thing altogether: to
have no English examination, eh?"

"If Madame consents, I consent."

"Heartily?"

"Very heartily."

He smoked his cigar in silence. He turned suddenly.

"Donnez-moi la main," said he, and the spite and jealousy melted out of
his face, and a generous kindliness shone there instead.

"Come, we will not be rivals, we will be friends," he pursued. "The
examination shall take place, and I will choose a good moment; and
instead of vexing and hindering, as I felt half-inclined ten minutes
ago--for I have my malevolent moods: I always had from childhood--I
will aid you sincerely. After all, you are solitary and a stranger, and
have your way to make and your bread to earn; it may be well that you
should become known. We will be friends: do you agree?"

"Out of my heart, Monsieur. I am glad of a friend. I like that better
than a triumph."

"Pauvrette?" said he, and turned away and left the alley.

The examination passed over well; M. Paul was as good as his word, and
did his best to make my part easy. The next day came the distribution
of prizes; that also passed; the school broke up; the pupils went home,
and now began the long vacation.

That vacation! Shall I ever forget it? I think not. Madame Beck went,
the first day of the holidays, to join her children at the sea-side;
all the three teachers had parents or friends with whom they took
refuge; every professor quitted the city; some went to Paris, some to
Boue-Marine; M. Paul set forth on a pilgrimage to Rome; the house was
left quite empty, but for me, a servant, and a poor deformed and
imbecile pupil, a sort of cretin, whom her stepmother in a distant
province would not allow to return home.

My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords.
How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless! How vast
and void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the forsaken
garden--grey now with the dust of a town summer departed. Looking
forward at the commencement of those eight weeks, I hardly knew how I
was to live to the end. My spirits had long been gradually sinking; now
that the prop of employment was withdrawn, they went down fast. Even to
look forward was not to hope: the dumb future spoke no comfort, offered
no promise, gave no inducement to bear present evil in reliance on
future good. A sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed on
me--a despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all things
earthly. Alas! When I had full leisure to look on life as life must be
looked on by such as me, I found it but a hopeless desert: tawny sands,
with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in view. The hopes which
are dear to youth, which bear it up and lead it on, I knew not and
dared not know. If they knocked at my heart sometimes, an inhospitable
bar to admission must be inwardly drawn. When they turned away thus
rejected, tears sad enough sometimes flowed: but it could not be
helped: I dared not give such guests lodging. So mortally did I fear
the sin and weakness of presumption.

Religious reader, you will preach to me a long sermon about what I have
just written, and so will you, moralist: and you, stern sage: you,
stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh. Well, each
and all, take it your own way. I accept the sermon, frown, sneer, and
laugh; perhaps you are all right: and perhaps, circumstanced like me,
you would have been, like me, wrong. The first month was, indeed, a
long, black, heavy month to me.

The cretin did not seem unhappy. I did my best to feed her well and
keep her warm, and she only asked food and sunshine, or when that
lacked, fire. Her weak faculties approved of inertion: her brain, her
eyes, her ears, her heart slept content; they could not wake to work,
so lethargy was their Paradise.

Three weeks of that vacation were hot, fair, and dry, but the fourth
and fifth were tempestuous and wet. I do not know why that change in
the atmosphere made a cruel impression on me, why the raging storm and
beating rain crushed me with a deadlier paralysis than I had
experienced while the air had remained serene; but so it was; and my
nervous system could hardly support what it had for many days and
nights to undergo in that huge empty house. How I used to pray to
Heaven for consolation and support! With what dread force the
conviction would grasp me that Fate was my permanent foe, never to be
conciliated. I did not, in my heart, arraign the mercy or justice of
God for this; I concluded it to be a part of his great plan that some
must deeply suffer while they live, and I thrilled in the certainty
that of this number, I was one.

It was some relief when an aunt of the cretin, a kind old woman, came
one day, and took away my strange, deformed companion. The hapless
creature had been at times a heavy charge; I could not take her out
beyond the garden, and I could not leave her a minute alone: for her
poor mind, like her body, was warped: its propensity was to evil. A
vague bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence, made constant vigilance
indispensable. As she very rarely spoke, and would sit for hours
together moping and mowing, and distorting her features with
indescribable grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with some
strange tameless animal, than associating with a human being. Then
there were personal attentions to be rendered which required the nerve
of a hospital nurse; my resolution was so tried, it sometimes fell
dead-sick. These duties should not have fallen on me; a servant, now
absent, had rendered them hitherto, and in the hurry of holiday
departure, no substitute to fill this office had been provided. This
tax and trial were by no means the least I have known in life. Still,
menial and distasteful as they were, my mental pain was far more
wasting and wearing. Attendance on the cretin deprived me often of the
power and inclination to swallow a meal, and sent me faint to the fresh
air, and the well or fountain in the court; but this duty never wrung
my heart, or brimmed my eyes, or scalded my cheek with tears hot as
molten metal.

The cretin being gone, I was free to walk out. At first I lacked
courage to venture very far from the Rue Fossette, but by degrees I
sought the city gates, and passed them, and then went wandering away
far along chaussees, through fields, beyond cemeteries, Catholic and
Protestant, beyond farmsteads, to lanes and little woods, and I know
not where. A goad thrust me on, a fever forbade me to rest; a want of
companionship maintained in my soul the cravings of a most deadly
famine. I often walked all day, through the burning noon and the arid
afternoon, and the dusk evening, and came back with moonrise.

While wandering in solitude, I would sometimes picture the present
probable position of others, my acquaintance. There was Madame Beck at
a cheerful watering-place with her children, her mother, and a whole
troop of friends who had sought the same scene of relaxation. Zelie St.
Pierre was at Paris, with her relatives; the other teachers were at
their homes. There was Ginevra Fanshawe, whom certain of her
connections had carried on a pleasant tour southward. Ginevra seemed to
me the happiest. She was on the route of beautiful scenery; these
September suns shone for her on fertile plains, where harvest and
vintage matured under their mellow beam. These gold and crystal moons
rose on her vision over blue horizons waved in mounted lines.

But all this was nothing; I too felt those autumn suns and saw those
harvest moons, and I almost wished to be covered in with earth and
turf, deep out of their influence; for I could not live in their light,
nor make them comrades, nor yield them affection. But Ginevra had a
kind of spirit with her, empowered to give constant strength and
comfort, to gladden daylight and embalm darkness; the best of the good
genii that guard humanity curtained her with his wings, and canopied
her head with his bending form. By True Love was Ginevra followed:
never could she be alone. Was she insensible to this presence? It
seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined
her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day
to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half conscious
of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceived
an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutual
understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundred
leagues--carrying, across mound and hollow, communication by prayer and
wish. Ginevra gradually became with me a sort of heroine. One day,
perceiving this growing illusion, I said, "I really believe my nerves
are getting overstretched: my mind has suffered somewhat too much a
malady is growing upon it--what shall I do? How shall I keep well?"

Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last a
day and night of peculiarly agonizing depression were succeeded by
physical illness, I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indian
summer closed and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark and
wet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf,
dishevelled--bewildered with sounding hurricane--I lay in a strange
fever of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in
the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A
rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied---Sleep never
came!

I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity she
brought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste,
that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, but
sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a
nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very
tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night a
cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well,
but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering,
brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips,
tastes not as this suffering tasted. Having drank and woke, I thought
all was over: the end come and past by. Trembling fearfully--as
consciousness returned--ready to cry out on some fellow-creature to
help me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near enough to catch
the wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic could not hear--I rose
on my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me: indescribably was
I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the horrors of that dream
I think the worst lay here. Methought the well-loved dead, who had
loved _me_ well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated: galled was my
inmost spirit with an unutterable sense of despair about the future.
Motive there was none why I should try to recover or wish to live; and
yet quite unendurable was the pitiless and haughty voice in which Death
challenged me to engage his unknown terrors. When I tried to pray I
could only utter these words: "From my youth up Thy terrors have I
suffered with a troubled mind."

Most true was it.

On bringing me my tea next morning Goton urged me to call in a doctor.
I would not: I thought no doctor could cure me.

One evening--and I was not delirious: I was in my sane mind, I got
up--I dressed myself, weak and shaking. The solitude and the stillness
of the long dormitory could not be borne any longer; the ghastly white
beds were turning into spectres--the coronal of each became a
death's-head, huge and sun-bleached--dead dreams of an elder world and
mightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That evening
more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate
was of stone, and Hope a false idol--blind, bloodless, and of granite
core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its
climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling
as they were. It rained still, and blew; but with more clemency, I
thought, than it had poured and raged all day. Twilight was falling,
and I deemed its influence pitiful; from the lattice I saw coming
night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping. It seemed to me that
at this hour there was affection and sorrow in Heaven above for all
pain suffered on earth beneath; the weight of my dreadful dream became
alleviated--that insufferable thought of being no more loved--no more
owned, half-yielded to hope of the contrary--I was sure this hope would
shine clearer if I got out from under this house-roof, which was
crushing as the slab of a tomb, and went outside the city to a certain
quiet hill, a long way distant in the fields. Covered with a cloak (I
could not be delirious, for I had sense and recollection to put on warm
clothing), forth I set. The bells of a church arrested me in passing;
they seemed to call me in to the _salut_, and I went in. Any solemn
rite, any spectacle of sincere worship, any opening for appeal to God
was as welcome to me then as bread to one in extremity of want. I knelt
down with others on the stone pavement. It was an old solemn church,
its pervading gloom not gilded but purpled by light shed through
stained glass.

Few worshippers were assembled, and, the _salut_ over, half of them
departed. I discovered soon that those left remained to confess. I did
not stir. Carefully every door of the church was shut; a holy quiet
sank upon, and a solemn shade gathered about us. After a space,
breathless and spent in prayer, a penitent approached the confessional.
I watched. She whispered her avowal; her shrift was whispered back; she
returned consoled. Another went, and another. A pale lady, kneeling
near me, said in a low, kind voice:--"Go you now, I am not quite
prepared."

Mechanically obedient, I rose and went. I knew what I was about; my
mind had run over the intent with lightning-speed. To take this step
could not make me more wretched than I was; it might soothe me.

The priest within the confessional never turned his eyes to regard me;
he only quietly inclined his ear to my lips. He might be a good man,
but this duty had become to him a sort of form: he went through it with
the phlegm of custom. I hesitated; of the formula of confession I was
ignorant: instead of commencing, then, with the prelude usual, I
said:--"Mon pere, je suis Protestante."

He directly turned. He was not a native priest: of that class, the cast
of physiognomy is, almost invariably, grovelling: I saw by his profile
and brow he was a Frenchman; though grey and advanced in years, he did
not, I think, lack feeling or intelligence. He inquired, not unkindly,
why, being a Protestant, I came to him?

I said I was perishing for a word of advice or an accent of comfort. I
had been living for some weeks quite alone; I had been ill; I had a
pressure of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly any longer
endure the weight.

"Was it a sin, a crime?" he inquired, somewhat startled. I reassured
him on this point, and, as well as I could, I showed him the mere
outline of my experience.

He looked thoughtful, surprised, puzzled. "You take me unawares," said
he. "I have not had such a case as yours before: ordinarily we know our
routine, and are prepared; but this makes a great break in the common
course of confession. I am hardly furnished with counsel fitting the
circumstances."

Of course, I had not expected he would be; but the mere relief of
communication in an ear which was human and sentient, yet
consecrated--the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating,
long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not be again
diffused--had done me good. I was already solaced.

"Must I go, father?" I asked of him as he sat silent.

"My daughter," he said kindly--and I am sure he was a kind man: he had
a compassionate eye--"for the present you had better go: but I assure
you your words have struck me. Confession, like other things, is apt to
become formal and trivial with habit. You have come and poured your
heart out; a thing seldom done. I would fain think your case over, and
take it with me to my oratory. Were you of our faith I should know what
to say--a mind so tossed can find repose but in the bosom of retreat,
and the punctual practice of piety. The world, it is well known, has no
satisfaction for that class of natures. Holy men have bidden penitents
like you to hasten their path upward by penance, self-denial, and
difficult good works. Tears are given them here for meat and
drink--bread of affliction and waters of affliction--their recompence
comes hereafter. It is my own conviction that these impressions under
which you are smarting are messengers from God to bring you back to the
true Church. You were made for our faith: depend upon it our faith
alone could heal and help you--Protestantism is altogether too dry,
cold, prosaic for you. The further I look into this matter, the more
plainly I see it is entirely out of the common order of things. On no
account would I lose sight of you. Go, my daughter, for the present;
but return to me again."

I rose and thanked him. I was withdrawing when he signed me to return.

"You must not come to this church," said he: "I see you are ill, and
this church is too cold; you must come to my house: I live----" (and he
gave me his address). "Be there to-morrow morning at ten."

In reply to this appointment, I only bowed; and pulling down my veil,
and gathering round me my cloak, I glided away.

Did I, do you suppose, reader, contemplate venturing again within that
worthy priest's reach? As soon should I have thought of walking into a
Babylonish furnace. That priest had arms which could influence me: he
was naturally kind, with a sentimental French kindness, to whose
softness I knew myself not wholly impervious. Without respecting some
sorts of affection, there was hardly any sort having a fibre of root in
reality, which I could rely on my force wholly to withstand. Had I gone
to him, he would have shown me all that was tender, and comforting, and
gentle, in the honest Popish superstition. Then he would have tried to
kindle, blow and stir up in me the zeal of good works. I know not how
it would all have ended. We all think ourselves strong in some points;
we all know ourselves weak in many; the probabilities are that had I
visited Numero 10, Rue des Mages, at the hour and day appointed, I
might just now, instead of writing this heretic narrative, be counting
my beads in the cell of a certain Carmelite convent on the Boulevard of
Crecy, in Villette. There was something of Fenelon about that benign
old priest; and whatever most of his brethren may be, and whatever I
may think of his Church and creed (and I like neither), of himself I
must ever retain a grateful recollection. He was kind when I needed
kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!

Twilight had passed into night, and the lamps were lit in the streets
ere I issued from that sombre church. To turn back was now become
possible to me; the wild longing to breathe this October wind on the
little hill far without the city walls had ceased to be an imperative
impulse, and was softened into a wish with which Reason could cope: she
put it down, and I turned, as I thought, to the Rue Fossette. But I had
become involved in a part of the city with which I was not familiar; it
was the old part, and full of narrow streets of picturesque, ancient,
and mouldering houses. I was much too weak to be very collected, and I
was still too careless of my own welfare and safety to be cautious; I
grew embarrassed; I got immeshed in a network of turns unknown. I was
lost and had no resolution to ask guidance of any passenger.

If the storm had lulled a little at sunset, it made up now for lost
time. Strong and horizontal thundered the current of the wind from
north-west to south-east; it brought rain like spray, and sometimes a
sharp hail, like shot: it was cold and pierced me to the vitals. I bent
my head to meet it, but it beat me back. My heart did not fail at all
in this conflict; I only wished that I had wings and could ascend the
gale, spread and repose my pinions on its strength, career in its
course, sweep where it swept. While wishing this, I suddenly felt
colder where before I was cold, and more powerless where before I was
weak. I tried to reach the porch of a great building near, but the mass
of frontage and the giant spire turned black and vanished from my eyes.
Instead of sinking on the steps as I intended, I seemed to pitch
headlong down an abyss. I remember no more.





CHAPTER XVI.

AULD LANG SYNE.


Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw,
or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept
her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling
imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and
come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and
deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While
she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's
threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, have bound her, once more,
all shuddering and unwilling, to that poor frame, cold and wasted, of
whose companionship she was grown more than weary.

I know she re-entered her prison with pain, with reluctance, with a
moan and a long shiver. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were
hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a
racking sort of struggle. The returning sense of sight came upon me,
red, as if it swam in blood; suspended hearing rushed back loud, like
thunder; consciousness revived in fear: I sat up appalled, wondering
into what region, amongst what strange beings I was waking. At first I
knew nothing I looked on: a wall was not a wall--a lamp not a lamp. I
should have understood what we call a ghost, as well as I did the
commonest object: which is another way of intimating that all my eye
rested on struck it as spectral. But the faculties soon settled each in
his place; the life-machine presently resumed its wonted and regular
working.

Still, I knew not where I was; only in time I saw I had been removed
from the spot where I fell: I lay on no portico-step; night and tempest
were excluded by walls, windows, and ceiling. Into some house I had
been carried--but what house?

I could only think of the pensionnat in the Rue Fossette. Still
half-dreaming, I tried hard to discover in what room they had put me;
whether the great dormitory, or one of the little dormitories. I was
puzzled, because I could not make the glimpses of furniture I saw
accord with my knowledge of any of these apartments. The empty white
beds were wanting, and the long line of large windows. "Surely,"
thought I, "it is not to Madame Beck's own chamber they have carried
me!" And here my eye fell on an easy-chair covered with blue damask.
Other seats, cushioned to match, dawned on me by degrees; and at last I
took in the complete fact of a pleasant parlour, with a wood fire on a
clear-shining hearth, a carpet where arabesques of bright blue relieved
a ground of shaded fawn; pale walls over which a slight but endless
garland of azure forget-me-nots ran mazed and bewildered amongst myriad
gold leaves and tendrils. A gilded mirror filled up the space between
two windows, curtained amply with blue damask. In this mirror I saw
myself laid, not in bed, but on a sofa. I looked spectral; my eyes
larger and more hollow, my hair darker than was natural, by contrast
with my thin and ashen face. It was obvious, not only from the
furniture, but from the position of windows, doors, and fireplace, that
this was an unknown room in an unknown house.

Hardly less plain was it that my brain was not yet settled; for, as I
gazed at the blue arm-chair, it appeared to grow familiar; so did a
certain scroll-couch, and not less so the round centre-table, with a
blue-covering, bordered with autumn-tinted foliage; and, above all, two
little footstools with worked covers, and a small ebony-framed chair,
of which the seat and back were also worked with groups of brilliant
flowers on a dark ground.

Struck with these things, I explored further. Strange to say, old
acquaintance were all about me, and "auld lang syne" smiled out of
every nook. There were two oval miniatures over the mantel-piece, of
which I knew by heart the pearls about the high and powdered "heads;"
the velvets circling the white throats; the swell of the full muslin
kerchiefs: the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon the
mantel-shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive
tea-service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white
centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass.
Of all these things I could have told the peculiarities, numbered the
flaws or cracks, like any _clairvoyante_. Above all, there was a pair
of handscreens, with elaborate pencil-drawings finished like line
engravings; these, my very eyes ached at beholding again, recalling
hours when they had followed, stroke by stroke and touch by touch, a
tedious, feeble, finical, school-girl pencil held in these fingers, now
so skeleton-like.

Where was I? Not only in what spot of the world, but in what year of
our Lord? For all these objects were of past days, and of a distant
country. Ten years ago I bade them good-by; since my fourteenth year
they and I had never met. I gasped audibly, "Where am I?"

A shape hitherto unnoticed, stirred, rose, came forward: a shape
inharmonious with the environment, serving only to complicate the
riddle further. This was no more than a sort of native bonne, in a
common-place bonne's cap and print-dress. She spoke neither French nor
English, and I could get no intelligence from her, not understanding
her phrases of dialect. But she bathed my temples and forehead with
some cool and perfumed water, and then she heightened the cushion on
which I reclined, made signs that I was not to speak, and resumed her
post at the foot of the sofa.

She was busy knitting; her eyes thus drawn from me, I could gaze on her
without interruption. I did mightily wonder how she came there, or what
she could have to do among the scenes, or with the days of my girlhood.
Still more I marvelled what those scenes and days could now have to do
with me.

Too weak to scrutinize thoroughly the mystery, I tried to settle it by
saying it was a mistake, a dream, a fever-fit; and yet I knew there
could be no mistake, and that I was not sleeping, and I believed I was
sane. I wished the room had not been so well lighted, that I might not
so clearly have seen the little pictures, the ornaments, the screens,
the worked chair. All these objects, as well as the blue-damask
furniture, were, in fact, precisely the same, in every minutest detail,
with those I so well remembered, and with which I had been so
thoroughly intimate, in the drawing-room of my godmother's house at
Bretton. Methought the apartment only was changed, being of different
proportions and dimensions.

I thought of Bedreddin Hassan, transported in his sleep from Cairo to
the gates of Damascus. Had a Genius stooped his dark wing down the
storm to whose stress I had succumbed, and gathering me from the
church-steps, and "rising high into the air," as the eastern tale said,
had he borne me over land and ocean, and laid me quietly down beside a
hearth of Old England? But no; I knew the fire of that hearth burned
before its Lares no more--it went out long ago, and the household gods
had been carried elsewhere.

The bonne turned again to survey me, and seeing my eyes wide open, and,
I suppose, deeming their expression perturbed and excited, she put down
her knitting. I saw her busied for a moment at a little stand; she
poured out water, and measured drops from a phial: glass in hand, she
approached me. What dark-tinged draught might she now be offering? what
Genii-elixir or Magi-distillation?

It was too late to inquire--I had swallowed it passively, and at once.
A tide of quiet thought now came gently caressing my brain; softer and
softer rose the flow, with tepid undulations smoother than balm. The
pain of weakness left my limbs, my muscles slept. I lost power to move;
but, losing at the same time wish, it was no privation. That kind bonne
placed a screen between me and the lamp; I saw her rise to do this, but
do not remember seeing her resume her place: in the interval between
the two acts, I "fell on sleep."

       *       *       *       *       *

At waking, lo! all was again changed. The light of high day surrounded
me; not, indeed, a warm, summer light, but the leaden gloom of raw and
blustering autumn. I felt sure now that I was in the pensionnat--sure
by the beating rain on the casement; sure by the "wuther" of wind
amongst trees, denoting a garden outside; sure by the chill, the
whiteness, the solitude, amidst which I lay. I say _whiteness_--for the
dimity curtains, dropped before a French bed, bounded my view.

I lifted them; I looked out. My eye, prepared to take in the range of a
long, large, and whitewashed chamber, blinked baffled, on encountering
the limited area of a small cabinet--a cabinet with seagreen walls;
also, instead of five wide and naked windows, there was one high
lattice, shaded with muslin festoons: instead of two dozen little
stands of painted wood, each holding a basin and an ewer, there was a
toilette-table dressed, like a lady for a ball, in a white robe over a
pink skirt; a polished and large glass crowned, and a pretty
pin-cushion frilled with lace, adorned it. This toilette, together with
a small, low, green and white chintz arm-chair, a washstand topped with
a marble slab, and supplied with utensils of pale greenware,
sufficiently furnished the tiny chamber.

Reader; I felt alarmed! Why? you will ask. What was there in this
simple and somewhat pretty sleeping-closet to startle the most timid?
Merely this--These articles of furniture could not be real, solid
arm-chairs, looking-glasses, and washstands--they must be the ghosts of
such articles; or, if this were denied as too wild an hypothesis--and,
confounded as I was, I _did_ deny it--there remained but to conclude
that I had myself passed into an abnormal state of mind; in short, that
I was very ill and delirious: and even then, mine was the strangest
figment with which delirium had ever harassed a victim.

I knew--I was obliged to know--the green chintz of that little chair;
the little snug chair itself, the carved, shining-black, foliated frame
of that glass; the smooth, milky-green of the china vessels on the
stand; the very stand too, with its top of grey marble, splintered at
one corner;--all these I was compelled to recognise and to hail, as
last night I had, perforce, recognised and hailed the rosewood, the
drapery, the porcelain, of the drawing-room.

Bretton! Bretton! and ten years ago shone reflected in that mirror. And
why did Bretton and my fourteenth year haunt me thus? Why, if they came
at all, did they not return complete? Why hovered before my distempered
vision the mere furniture, while the rooms and the locality were gone?
As to that pincushion made of crimson satin, ornamented with gold beads
and frilled with thread-lace, I had the same right to know it as to
know the screens--I had made it myself. Rising with a start from the
bed, I took the cushion in my hand and examined it. There was the
cipher "L. L. B." formed in gold beds, and surrounded with an oval
wreath embroidered in white silk. These were the initials of my
godmother's name--Lonisa Lucy Bretton.

"Am I in England? Am I at Bretton?" I muttered; and hastily pulling up
the blind with which the lattice was shrouded, I looked out to try and
discover _where_ I was; half-prepared to meet the calm, old, handsome
buildings and clean grey pavement of St. Ann's Street, and to see at
the end the towers of the minster: or, if otherwise, fully expectant of
a town view somewhere, a rue in Villette, if not a street in a pleasant
and ancient English city.

I looked, on the contrary, through a frame of leafage, clustering round
the high lattice, and forth thence to a grassy mead-like level, a
lawn-terrace with trees rising from the lower ground beyond--high
forest-trees, such as I had not seen for many a day. They were now
groaning under the gale of October, and between their trunks I traced
the line of an avenue, where yellow leaves lay in heaps and drifts, or
were whirled singly before the sweeping west wind. Whatever landscape
might lie further must have been flat, and these tall beeches shut it
out. The place seemed secluded, and was to me quite strange: I did not
know it at all.

Once more I lay down. My bed stood in a little alcove; on turning my
face to the wall, the room with its bewildering accompaniments became
excluded. Excluded? No! For as I arranged my position in this hope,
behold, on the green space between the divided and looped-up curtains,
hung a broad, gilded picture-frame enclosing a portrait. It was
drawn--well drawn, though but a sketch--in water-colours; a head, a
boy's head, fresh, life-like, speaking, and animated. It seemed a youth
of sixteen, fair-complexioned, with sanguine health in his cheek; hair
long, not dark, and with a sunny sheen; penetrating eyes, an arch
mouth, and a gay smile. On the whole a most pleasant face to look at,
especially for, those claiming a right to that youth's
affections--parents, for instance, or sisters. Any romantic little
school-girl might almost have loved it in its frame. Those eyes looked
as if when somewhat older they would flash a lightning-response to
love: I cannot tell whether they kept in store the steady-beaming shine
of faith. For whatever sentiment met him in form too facile, his lips
menaced, beautifully but surely, caprice and light esteem.

Striving to take each new discovery as quietly as I could, I whispered
to myself--

"Ah! that portrait used to hang in the breakfast-room, over the
mantel-piece: somewhat too high, as I thought. I well remember how I
used to mount a music-stool for the purpose of unhooking it, holding it
in my hand, and searching into those bonny wells of eyes, whose glance
under their hazel lashes seemed like a pencilled laugh; and well I
liked to note the colouring of the cheek, and the expression of the
mouth." I hardly believed fancy could improve on the curve of that
mouth, or of the chin; even _my_ ignorance knew that both were
beautiful, and pondered perplexed over this doubt: "How it was that
what charmed so much, could at the same time so keenly pain?" Once, by
way of test, I took little Missy Home, and, lifting her in my arms,
told her to look at the picture.

"Do you like it, Polly?" I asked. She never answered, but gazed long,
and at last a darkness went trembling through her sensitive eye, as she
said, "Put me down." So I put her down, saying to myself: "The child
feels it too."

All these things do I now think over, adding, "He had his faults, yet
scarce ever was a finer nature; liberal, suave, impressible." My
reflections closed in an audibly pronounced word, "Graham!"

"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at the bedside. "Do you want Graham?"

I looked. The plot was but thickening; the wonder but culminating. If
it was strange to see that well-remembered pictured form on the wall,
still stranger was it to turn and behold the equally well-remembered
living form opposite--a woman, a lady, most real and substantial, tall,
well-attired, wearing widow's silk, and such a cap as best became her
matron and motherly braids of hair. Hers, too, was a good face; too
marked, perhaps, now for beauty, but not for sense or character. She
was little changed; something sterner, something more robust--but she
was my godmother: still the distinct vision of Mrs. Bretton.

I kept quiet, yet internally _I_ was much agitated: my pulse fluttered,
and the blood left my cheek, which turned cold.

"Madam, where am I?" I inquired.

"In a very safe asylum; well protected for the present; make your mind
quite easy till you get a little better; you look ill this morning."

"I am so entirely bewildered, I do not know whether I can trust my
senses at all, or whether they are misleading me in every particular:
but you speak English, do you not, madam?"

"I should think you might hear that: it would puzzle me to hold a long
discourse in French."

"You do not come from England?"

"I am lately arrived thence. Have you been long in this country? You
seem to know my son?"

"Do, I, madam? Perhaps I do. Your son--the picture there?"

"That is his portrait as a youth. While looking at it, you pronounced
his name."

"Graham Bretton?"

She nodded.

"I speak to Mrs. Bretton, formerly of Bretton, ----shire?"

"Quite right; and you, I am told, are an English teacher in a foreign
school here: my son recognised you as such."

"How was I found, madam, and by whom?"

"My son shall tell you that by-and-by," said she; "but at present you
are too confused and weak for conversation: try to eat some breakfast,
and then sleep."

Notwithstanding all I had undergone--the bodily fatigue, the
perturbation of spirits, the exposure to weather--it seemed that I was
better: the fever, the real malady which had oppressed my frame, was
abating; for, whereas during the last nine days I had taken no solid
food, and suffered from continual thirst, this morning, on breakfast
being offered, I experienced a craving for nourishment: an inward
faintness which caused me eagerly to taste the tea this lady offered,
and to eat the morsel of dry toast she allowed in accompaniment. It was
only a morsel, but it sufficed; keeping up my strength till some two or
three hours afterwards, when the bonne brought me a little cup of broth
and a biscuit.

As evening began to darken, and the ceaseless blast still blew wild and
cold, and the rain streamed on, deluge-like, I grew weary--very weary
of my bed. The room, though pretty, was small: I felt it confining: I
longed for a change. The increasing chill and gathering gloom, too,
depressed me; I wanted to see--to feel firelight. Besides, I kept
thinking of the son of that tall matron: when should I see him?
Certainly not till I left my room.

At last the bonne came to make my bed for the night. She prepared to
wrap me in a blanket and place me in the little chintz chair; but,
declining these attentions, I proceeded to dress myself:

The business was just achieved, and I was sitting down to take breath,
when Mrs. Bretton once more appeared.

"Dressed!" she exclaimed, smiling with that smile I so well knew--a
pleasant smile, though not soft. "You are quite better then? Quite
strong--eh?"

She spoke to me so much as of old she used to speak that I almost
fancied she was beginning to know me. There was the same sort of
patronage in her voice and manner that, as a girl, I had always
experienced from her--a patronage I yielded to and even liked; it was
not founded on conventional grounds of superior wealth or station (in
the last particular there had never been any inequality; her degree was
mine); but on natural reasons of physical advantage: it was the shelter
the tree gives the herb. I put a request without further ceremony.

"Do let me go down-stairs, madam; I am so cold and dull here."

"I desire nothing better, if you are strong enough to bear the change,"
was her reply. "Come then; here is an arm." And she offered me hers: I
took it, and we descended one flight of carpeted steps to a landing
where a tall door, standing open, gave admission into the blue-damask
room. How pleasant it was in its air of perfect domestic comfort! How
warm in its amber lamp-light and vermilion fire-flush! To render the
picture perfect, tea stood ready on the table--an English tea, whereof
the whole shining service glanced at me familiarly; from the solid
silver urn, of antique pattern, and the massive pot of the same metal,
to the thin porcelain cups, dark with purple and gilding. I knew the
very seed-cake of peculiar form, baked in a peculiar mould, which
always had a place on the tea-table at Bretton. Graham liked it, and
there it was as of yore--set before Graham's plate with the silver
knife and fork beside it. Graham was then expected to tea: Graham was
now, perhaps, in the house; ere many minutes I might see him.

"Sit down--sit down," said my conductress, as my step faltered a little
in passing to the hearth. She seated me on the sofa, but I soon passed
behind it, saying the fire was too hot; in its shade I found another
seat which suited me better. Mrs. Bretton was never wont to make a fuss
about any person or anything; without remonstrance she suffered me to
have my own way. She made the tea, and she took up the newspaper. I
liked to watch every action of my godmother; all her movements were so
young: she must have been now above fifty, yet neither her sinews nor
her spirit seemed yet touched by the rust of age. Though portly, she
was alert, and though serene, she was at times impetuous--good health
and an excellent temperament kept her green as in her spring.

While she read, I perceived she listened--listened for her son. She was
not the woman ever to confess herself uneasy, but there was yet no lull
in the weather, and if Graham were out in that hoarse wind--roaring
still unsatisfied--I well knew his mother's heart would be out with him.

"Ten minutes behind his time," said she, looking at her watch; then, in
another minute, a lifting of her eyes from the page, and a slight
inclination of her head towards the door, denoted that she heard some
sound. Presently her brow cleared; and then even my ear, less
practised, caught the iron clash of a gate swung to, steps on gravel,
lastly the door-bell. He was come. His mother filled the teapot from
the urn, she drew nearer the hearth the stuffed and cushioned blue
chair--her own chair by right, but I saw there was one who might with
impunity usurp it. And when that _one_ came up the stairs--which he
soon did, after, I suppose, some such attention to the toilet as the
wild and wet night rendered necessary, and strode straight in--

"Is it you, Graham?" said his mother, hiding a glad smile and speaking
curtly.

"Who else should it be, mamma?" demanded the Unpunctual, possessing
himself irreverently of the abdicated throne.

"Don't you deserve cold tea, for being late?"

"I shall not get my deserts, for the urn sings cheerily."

"Wheel yourself to the table, lazy boy: no seat will serve you but
mine; if you had one spark of a sense of propriety, you would always
leave that chair for the Old Lady."

"So I should; only the dear Old Lady persists in leaving it for me. How
is your patient, mamma?"

"Will she come forward and speak for herself?" said Mrs. Bretton,
turning to my corner; and at this invitation, forward I came. Graham
courteously rose up to greet me. He stood tall on the hearth, a figure
justifying his mother's unconcealed pride.

"So you are come down," said he; "you must be better then--much better.
I scarcely expected we should meet thus, or here. I was alarmed last
night, and if I had not been forced to hurry away to a dying patient, I
certainly would not have left you; but my mother herself is something
of a doctress, and Martha an excellent nurse. I saw the case was a
fainting-fit, not necessarily dangerous. What brought it on, I have yet
to learn, and all particulars; meantime, I trust you really do feel
better?"

"Much better," I said calmly. "Much better, I thank you, Dr. John."

For, reader, this tall young man--this darling son--this host of
mine--this Graham Bretton, _was_ Dr. John: he, and no other; and, what
is more, I ascertained this identity scarcely with surprise. What is
more, when I heard Graham's step on the stairs, I knew what manner of
figure would enter, and for whose aspect to prepare my eyes. The
discovery was not of to-day, its dawn had penetrated my perceptions
long since. Of course I remembered young Bretton well; and though ten
years (from sixteen to twenty-six) may greatly change the boy as they
mature him to the man, yet they could bring no such utter difference as
would suffice wholly to blind my eyes, or baffle my memory. Dr. John
Graham Bretton retained still an affinity to the youth of sixteen: he
had his eyes; he had some of his features; to wit, all the
excellently-moulded lower half of the face; I found him out soon. I
first recognised him on that occasion, noted several chapters back,
when my unguardedly-fixed attention had drawn on me the mortification
of an implied rebuke. Subsequent observation confirmed, in every point,
that early surmise. I traced in the gesture, the port, and the habits
of his manhood, all his boy's promise. I heard in his now deep tones
the accent of former days. Certain turns of phrase, peculiar to him of
old, were peculiar to him still; and so was many a trick of eye and
lip, many a smile, many a sudden ray levelled from the irid, under his
well-charactered brow.

To _say_ anything on the subject, to _hint_ at my discovery, had not
suited my habits of thought, or assimilated with my system of feeling.
On the contrary, I had preferred to keep the matter to myself. I liked
entering his presence covered with a cloud he had not seen through,
while he stood before me under a ray of special illumination which
shone all partial over his head, trembled about his feet, and cast
light no farther.

Well I knew that to him it could make little difference, were I to come
forward and announce, "This is Lucy Snowe!" So I kept back in my
teacher's place; and as he never asked my name, so I never gave it. He
heard me called "Miss," and "Miss Lucy;" he never heard the surname,
"Snowe." As to spontaneous recognition--though I, perhaps, was still
less changed than he--the idea never approached his mind, and why
should I suggest it?

During tea, Dr. John was kind, as it was his nature to be; that meal
over, and the tray carried out, he made a cosy arrangement of the
cushions in a corner of the sofa, and obliged me to settle amongst
them. He and his mother also drew to the fire, and ere we had sat ten
minutes, I caught the eye of the latter fastened steadily upon me.
Women are certainly quicker in some things than men.

"Well," she exclaimed, presently, "I have seldom seen a stronger
likeness! Graham, have you observed it?"

"Observed what? What ails the Old Lady now? How you stare, mamma! One
would think you had an attack of second sight."

"Tell me, Graham, of whom does that young lady remind you?" pointing to
me.

"Mamma, you put her out of countenance. I often tell you abruptness is
your fault; remember, too, that to you she is a stranger, and does not
know your ways."

"Now, when she looks down; now, when she turns sideways, who is she
like, Graham?"

"Indeed, mamma, since you propound the riddle, I think you ought to
solve it!"

"And you have known her some time, you say--ever since you first began
to attend the school in the Rue Fossette:--yet you never mentioned to
me that singular resemblance!"

"I could not mention a thing of which I never thought, and which I do
not now acknowledge. What _can_ you mean?"

"Stupid boy! look at her."

Graham did look: but this was not to be endured; I saw how it must end,
so I thought it best to anticipate.

"Dr. John," I said, "has had so much to do and think of, since he and I
shook hands at our last parting in St. Ann's Street, that, while I
readily found out Mr. Graham Bretton, some months ago, it never
occurred to me as possible that he should recognise Lucy Snowe."

"Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!" cried Mrs. Bretton. And she at
once stepped across the hearth and kissed me. Some ladies would,
perhaps, have made a great bustle upon such a discovery without being
particularly glad of it; but it was not my godmother's habit to make a
bustle, and she preferred all sentimental demonstrations in bas-relief.
So she and I got over the surprise with few words and a single salute;
yet I daresay she was pleased, and I know I was. While we renewed old
acquaintance, Graham, sitting opposite, silently disposed of his
paroxysm of astonishment.

"Mamma calls me a stupid boy, and I think I am so," at length he said;
"for, upon my honour, often as I have seen you, I never once suspected
this fact: and yet I perceive it all now. Lucy Snowe! To be sure! I
recollect her perfectly, and there she sits; not a doubt of it. But,"
he added, "you surely have not known me as an old acquaintance all this
time, and never mentioned it."

"That I have," was my answer.

Dr. John commented not. I supposed he regarded my silence as eccentric,
but he was indulgent in refraining from censure. I daresay, too, he
would have deemed it impertinent to have interrogated me very closely,
to have asked me the why and wherefore of my reserve; and, though he
might feel a little curious, the importance of the case was by no means
such as to tempt curiosity to infringe on discretion.

For my part, I just ventured to inquire whether he remembered the
circumstance of my once looking at him very fixedly; for the slight
annoyance he had betrayed on that occasion still lingered sore on my
mind.

"I think I do!" said he: "I think I was even cross with you."

"You considered me a little bold; perhaps?" I inquired.

"Not at all. Only, shy and retiring as your general manner was, I
wondered what personal or facial enormity in me proved so magnetic to
your usually averted eyes."

"You see how it was now?"

"Perfectly."

And here Mrs. Bretton broke in with many, many questions about past
times; and for her satisfaction I had to recur to gone-by troubles, to
explain causes of seeming estrangement, to touch on single-handed
conflict with Life, with Death, with Grief, with Fate. Dr. John
listened, saying little. He and she then told me of changes they had
known: even with them all had not gone smoothly, and fortune had
retrenched her once abundant gifts. But so courageous a mother, with
such a champion in her son, was well fitted to fight a good fight with
the world, and to prevail ultimately. Dr. John himself was one of those
on whose birth benign planets have certainly smiled. Adversity might
set against him her most sullen front: he was the man to beat her down
with smiles. Strong and cheerful, and firm and courteous; not rash, yet
valiant; he was the aspirant to woo Destiny herself, and to win from
her stone eyeballs a beam almost loving.

In the profession he had adopted, his success was now quite decided.
Within the last three months he had taken this house (a small chateau,
they told me, about half a league without the Porte de Crecy); this
country site being chosen for the sake of his mother's health, with
which town air did not now agree. Hither he had invited Mrs. Bretton,
and she, on leaving England, had brought with her such residue
furniture of the former St. Ann's Street mansion as she had thought fit
to keep unsold. Hence my bewilderment at the phantoms of chairs, and
the wraiths of looking-glasses, tea-urns, and teacups.

As the clock struck eleven, Dr. John stopped his mother.

"Miss Snowe must retire now," he said; "she is beginning to look very
pale. To-morrow I will venture to put some questions respecting the
cause of her loss of health. She is much changed, indeed, since last
July, when I saw her enact with no little spirit the part of a very
killing fine gentleman. As to last night's catastrophe, I am sure
thereby hangs a tale, but we will inquire no further this evening.
Good-night, Miss Lucy."

And so he kindly led me to the door, and holding a wax-candle, lighted
me up the one flight of stairs.

When I had said my prayers, and when I was undressed and laid down, I
felt that I still had friends. Friends, not professing vehement
attachment, not offering the tender solace of well-matched and
congenial relationship; on whom, therefore, but moderate demand of
affection was to be made, of whom but moderate expectation formed; but
towards whom my heart softened instinctively, and yearned with an
importunate gratitude, which I entreated Reason betimes to check.

"Do not let me think of them too often, too much, too fondly," I
implored: "let me be content with a temperate draught of this living
stream: let me not run athirst, and apply passionately to its welcome
waters: let me not imagine in them a sweeter taste than earth's
fountains know. Oh! would to God I may be enabled to feel enough
sustained by an occasional, amicable intercourse, rare, brief,
unengrossing and tranquil: quite tranquil!"

Still repeating this word, I turned to my pillow; and _still_ repeating
it, I steeped that pillow with tears.

 Chapter XIV is eventful: a secret love is revealed, and M. Paul Emanuel's character is explored. Each summer, the pensionnat has a fete in honor of Madame Beck. The parents and families of the students are invited, as well as some single young men from good families. The day is filled with excitement. The highlight of the event, however, is the play put on by the students and directed by the literature professor, M. Paul Emanuel. This is the teacher, a cousin of Madame Beck, who "read" Lucy's face on the night she first came to Madame Beck's. Ginevra Fanshawe is set to play the part of the beautiful coquette in the little comedy, but one of the girls who was to play the young rake has fallen ill and is unable to participate. M. Paul is in a panic, and the only option for him is to press Lucy into service. In order to make sure that Lucy, who has up to this point only observed the play preparations, learn her part in the space of a few hours, M. Paul marches Lucy up to the attic and locks her in. She is left in the heat, with the beetles and rats, all day. She learns her part and acts tolerably well in the performance. She and Ginevra warm to their subject, and they subvert the spirit of the lines to such an extent that the rake is seen in a more sympathetic light than he was written. After the performance there is a ball, and Dr. John approaches Ginevra and Lucy and tells them they are standing in a draft. During the conversation it becomes clear that Dr. John is Isidore, the mysterious suitor who is passionately in love with Ginevra and who has been giving her presents of jewelry. Also present at the ball is another admirer of Ginevra, Colonel Count De Hamal, a small-featured, dark, middle-sized man who is the physical and social opposite of Dr. John. Ginevra, to Lucy's chagrin, claims to prefer the Colonel-Count. In Chapter XV, "The Long Vacation," we learn that the two months between the party and the end of term is the time when most of the schoolwork of the year is done in preparation for the final examinations. M. Paul conducts the examinations in all subjects except English, which Lucy must conduct. Lucy perceives that M. Paul, while a great intellect, is vain and jealous of his academic power. After the examinations are over, Lucy is left almost alone at the school for eight weeks as the sole around-the-clock charge of a handicapped, deformed girl. With no other teachers, students, or masters for company, Lucy is essentially left alone for a long period of time. Lucy becomes severely depressed and even contemplates the attractiveness of death. She takes long, solitary, dangerous walks far out into the country, returning to the school late at night. After an aunt of the deformed child comes to take the girl away, Lucy, even more alone than before, falls ill and has night terrors and ominous, hallucinatory dreams. One evening Lucy is gripped by a desire to walk, so she wanders out into town and ends up in a church during Catholic Mass. Lucy tells the priest that, though she is a Protestant, she wishes to tell some "consecrated ear" that she has "a pressure of affliction" on her mind. He says he must reflect and then tells her that she should visit him the next morning. Lucy does not go, for she is convinced that if she did so she would be seduced by "all that was tender, and comforting, and gentle in the honest popish superstition." On the way back to Madame Beck's, in a fearful storm, Lucy loses her way and faints on the steps of a large building. "Auld Lang Syne" is the name of Chapter XVI, implying that things from the remembered past will return. Lucy, waking up from her faint, finds herself, incredibly, in a room which contains articles from Mrs. Bretton's house on St. Ann's Street, which Lucy has not visited in almost ten years. Mrs. Bretton, also incredibly, appears to ask after Lucy's health, and for a while Lucy doubts her sanity. Lucy now understands that this is indeed her godmother and that Dr. John is her son. Lucy admits to the reader, however, that she had guessed his identity on his first or second visit to Madame Beck's. Since Dr. John had taken so little notice of Lucy at the time, however, and when she had inspected him and recognized him he had dismissed her so peremptorily, Lucy had chosen, whether out of embarrassment or perversity, not to enlighten him regarding their previous acquaintance. Dr. John's lack of interest in her, and his inability to recognize her, too, were significant, and these inattentions hurt Lucy deeply. Mrs. Bretton recognizes Lucy after a closer examination and chides her son for not recognizing her sooner. Dr. John does now recognize her and, while kindly welcoming her and abjuring his own stupidity at his error, does not directly apologize to Lucy for taking so little notice of her. Lucy, of course, excuses him. Lucy goes to bed that night and weeps. She is pleased that she once again has people in this world-specifically English people of her own class and religion-whom she may call friends, but the fact that Dr. John had to be prompted by his mother in order to recognize Lucy is indicative not only of her regrettable change in status in the world, but also of her continuing lack of importance in Dr. John's eyes. Chapter XIV's fete and play show more of Lucy's capacity for self-knowledge and her extraordinary ability to correctly read and critique the characters of those around her. Lucy, who judges Ginevra to be a vain and selfish sort of person, nevertheless sees that, though Ginevra is relatively poor, Ginevra will have much more of the good things of life offered to her simply because of her physical beauty and family connections than Lucy ever will. The disparity between two young women's prospects, though they were born into the same class and station in life, is thrown into high relief. The subtext, of course, is also the disparity between Lucy, who is dependent upon luck, her wits, and the kindness of strangers for her very existence, and Dr. John, who is able to choose his profession, be trained for it, and actively earn a good living by it.

