الفصل الفصل 31 · The Dryad

ng was advancing, and the weather had turned suddenly warm.

This change of temperature brought with it for me, as probably for many

others, temporary decrease of strength. Slight exertion at this time

left me overcome with fatigue—sleepless nights entailed languid days.

One Sunday afternoon, having walked the distance of half a league to

the Protestant church, I came back weary and exhausted; and taking

refuge in my solitary sanctuary, the first classe, I was glad to sit

down, and to make of my desk a pillow for my arms and head.

Awhile I listened to the lullaby of bees humming in the berceau, and

watched, through the glass door and the tender, lightly-strewn spring

foliage, Madame Beck and a gay party of friends, whom she had

entertained that day at dinner after morning mass, walking in the

centre-alley under orchard boughs dressed at this season in blossom,

and wearing a colouring as pure and warm as mountain-snow at sun-rise.

My principal attraction towards this group of guests lay, I remember,

in one figure—that of a handsome young girl whom I had seen before as a

visitor at Madame Beck’s, and of whom I had been vaguely told that she

was a “filleule,” or god-daughter, of M. Emanuel’s, and that between

her mother, or aunt, or some other female relation of hers, and the

Professor, had existed of old a special friendship. M. Paul was not of

the holiday band to-day, but I had seen this young girl with him ere

now, and as far as distant observation could enable me to judge, she

seemed to enjoy him with the frank ease of a ward with an indulgent

guardian. I had seen her run up to him, put her arm through his, and

hang upon him. Once, when she did so, a curious sensation had struck

through me—a disagreeable anticipatory sensation—one of the family of

presentiments, I suppose—but I refused to analyze or dwell upon it.

While watching this girl, Mademoiselle Sauveur by name, and following

the gleam of her bright silk robe (she was always richly dressed, for

she was said to be wealthy) through the flowers and the glancing leaves

of tender emerald, my eyes became dazzled—they closed; my lassitude,

the warmth of the day, the hum of bees and birds, all lulled me, and at

last I slept.

Two hours stole over me. Ere I woke, the sun had declined out of sight

behind the towering houses, the garden and the room were grey, bees had

gone homeward, and the flowers were closing; the party of guests, too,

had vanished; each alley was void.

On waking, I felt much at ease—not chill, as I ought to have been after

sitting so still for at least two hours; my cheek and arms were not

benumbed by pressure against the hard desk. No wonder. Instead of the

bare wood on which I had laid them, I found a thick shawl, carefully

folded, substituted for support, and another shawl (both taken from the

corridor where such things hung) wrapped warmly round me.

Who had done this? Who was my friend? Which of the teachers? Which of

the pupils? None, except St. Pierre, was inimical to me; but which of

them had the art, the thought, the habit, of benefiting thus tenderly?

Which of them had a step so quiet, a hand so gentle, but I should have

heard or felt her, if she had approached or touched me in a day-sleep?

As to Ginevra Fanshawe, that bright young creature was not gentle at

all, and would certainly have pulled me out of my chair, if she had

meddled in the matter. I said at last: “It is Madame Beck’s doing; she

has come in, seen me asleep, and thought I might take cold. She

considers me a useful machine, answering well the purpose for which it

was hired; so would not have me needlessly injured. And now,”

methought, “I’ll take a walk; the evening is fresh, and not very

chill.”

So I opened the glass door and stepped into the berceau.

I went to my own alley: had it been dark, or even dusk, I should have

hardly ventured there, for I had not yet forgotten the curious illusion

of vision (if illusion it were) experienced in that place some months

ago. But a ray of the setting sun burnished still the grey crown of

Jean Baptiste; nor had all the birds of the garden yet vanished into

their nests amongst the tufted shrubs and thick wall-ivy. I paced up

and down, thinking almost the same thoughts I had pondered that night

when I buried my glass jar—how I should make some advance in life, take

another step towards an independent position; for this train of

reflection, though not lately pursued, had never by me been wholly

abandoned; and whenever a certain eye was averted from me, and a

certain countenance grew dark with unkindness and injustice, into that

track of speculation did I at once strike; so that, little by little, I

had laid half a plan.

“Living costs little,” said I to myself, “in this economical town of

Villette, where people are more sensible than I understand they are in

dear old England—infinitely less worried about appearance, and less

emulous of display—where nobody is in the least ashamed to be quite as

homely and saving as he finds convenient. House-rent, in a prudently

chosen situation, need not be high. When I shall have saved one

thousand francs, I will take a tenement with one large room, and two or

three smaller ones, furnish the first with a few benches and desks, a

black tableau, an estrade for myself; upon it a chair and table, with a

sponge and some white chalks; begin with taking day-pupils, and so work

my way upwards. Madame Beck’s commencement was—as I have often heard

her say—from no higher starting-point, and where is she now? All these

premises and this garden are hers, bought with her money; she has a

competency already secured for old age, and a flourishing establishment

under her direction, which will furnish a career for her children.

“Courage, Lucy Snowe! With self-denial and economy now, and steady

exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to

complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks

interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved,

by winning that prize, your right to look higher. But afterwards, is

there nothing more for me in life—no true home—nothing to be dearer to

me than myself, and by its paramount preciousness, to draw from me

better things than I care to culture for myself only? Nothing, at whose

feet I can willingly lay down the whole burden of human egotism, and

gloriously take up the nobler charge of labouring and living for

others? I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of your life is not to be so

rounded: for you, the crescent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a

huge mass of my fellow-creatures in no better circumstances. I see that

a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions

of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few

favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening

the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the

beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I

weep.”

So this subject is done with. It is right to look our life-accounts

bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly. And he is a

poor self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons the items, and

sets down under the head—happiness that which is misery. Call

anguish—anguish, and despair—despair; write both down in strong

characters with a resolute pen: you will the better pay your debt to

Doom. Falsify: insert “privilege” where you should have written “pain;”

and see if your mighty creditor will allow the fraud to pass, or accept

the coin with which you would cheat him. Offer to the strongest—if the

darkest angel of God’s host—water, when he has asked blood—will he take

it? Not a whole pale sea for one red drop. I settled another account.

Pausing before Methusaleh—the giant and patriarch of the garden—and

leaning my brow against his knotty trunk, my foot rested on the stone

sealing the small sepulchre at his root; and I recalled the passage of

feeling therein buried; I recalled Dr. John; my warm affection for him;

my faith in his excellence; my delight in his grace. What was become of

that curious one-sided friendship which was half marble and half life;

only on one hand truth, and on the other perhaps a jest?

Was this feeling dead? I do not know, but it was buried. Sometimes I

thought the tomb unquiet, and dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and

of hair, still golden, and living, obtruded through coffin-chinks.

Had I been too hasty? I used to ask myself; and this question would

occur with a cruel sharpness after some brief chance interview with Dr.

John. He had still such kind looks, such a warm hand; his voice still

kept so pleasant a tone for my name; I never liked “Lucy” so well as

when he uttered it. But I learned in time that this benignity, this

cordiality, this music, belonged in no shape to me: it was a part of

himself; it was the honey of his temper; it was the balm of his mellow

mood; he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the

rifling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their

perfume. Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is

the sweetbriar enamoured of the air?

“Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not

mine. Good-night, and God bless you!”

Thus I closed my musings. “Good-night” left my lips in sound; I heard

the words spoken, and then I heard an echo—quite close.

“Good-night, Mademoiselle; or, rather, good-evening—the sun is scarce

set; I hope you slept well?”

I started, but was only discomposed a moment; I knew the voice and

speaker.

“Slept, Monsieur! When? where?”

“You may well inquire when—where. It seems you turn day into night, and

choose a desk for a pillow; rather hard lodging—?”

“It was softened for me, Monsieur, while I slept. That unseen,

gift-bringing thing which haunts my desk, remembered me. No matter how

I fell asleep; I awoke pillowed and covered.”

“Did the shawls keep you warm?”

“Very warm. Do you ask thanks for them?”

“No. You looked pale in your slumbers: are you home-sick?”

“To be home-sick, one must have a home; which I have not.”

“Then you have more need of a careful friend. I scarcely know any one,

Miss Lucy, who needs a friend more absolutely than you; your very

faults imperatively require it. You want so much checking, regulating,

and keeping down.”

This idea of “keeping down” never left M. Paul’s head; the most

habitual subjugation would, in my case, have failed to relieve him of

it. No matter; what did it signify? I listened to him, and did not

trouble myself to be too submissive; his occupation would have been

gone had I left him nothing to “keep down.”

“You need watching, and watching over,” he pursued; “and it is well for

you that I see this, and do my best to discharge both duties. I watch

you and others pretty closely, pretty constantly, nearer and oftener

than you or they think. Do you see that window with a light in it?”

He pointed to a lattice in one of the college boarding-houses.

“That,” said he, “is a room I have hired, nominally for a

study—virtually for a post of observation. There I sit and read for

hours together: it is my way—my taste. My book is this garden; its

contents are human nature—female human nature. I know you all by heart.

Ah! I know you well—St. Pierre, the Parisienne—cette maîtresse-femme,

my cousin Beck herself.”

“It is not right, Monsieur.”

“Comment? it is not right? By whose creed? Does some dogma of Calvin or

Luther condemn it? What is that to me? I am no Protestant. My rich

father (for, though I have known poverty, and once starved for a year

in a garret in Rome—starved wretchedly, often on a meal a day, and

sometimes not that—yet I was born to wealth)—my rich father was a good

Catholic; and he gave me a priest and a Jesuit for a tutor. I retain

his lessons; and to what discoveries, grand Dieu! have they not aided

me!”

“Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dishonourable discoveries.”

“Puritaine! I doubt it not. Yet see how my Jesuit’s system works. You

know the St. Pierre?”

“Partially.”

He laughed. “You say right—_‘partially’_; whereas _I_ know her

_thoroughly_; there is the difference. She played before me the

amiable; offered me patte de velours; caressed, flattered, fawned on

me. Now, I am accessible to a woman’s flattery—accessible against my

reason. Though never pretty, she was—when I first knew her—young, or

knew how to look young. Like all her countrywomen, she had the art of

dressing—she had a certain cool, easy, social assurance, which spared

me the pain of embarrassment—”

“Monsieur, that must have been unnecessary. I never saw you embarrassed

in my life.”

“Mademoiselle, you know little of me; I can be embarrassed as a petite

pensionnaire; there is a fund of modesty and diffidence in my nature—”

“Monsieur, I never saw it.”

“Mademoiselle, it is there. You ought to have seen it.”

“Monsieur, I have observed you in public—on platforms, in tribunes,

before titles and crowned heads—and you were as easy as you are in the

third division.”

“Mademoiselle, neither titles nor crowned heads excite my modesty; and

publicity is very much my element. I like it well, and breathe in it

quite freely;—but—but, in short, here is the sentiment brought into

action, at this very moment; however, I disdain to be worsted by it.

If, Mademoiselle, I were a marrying man (which I am not; and you may

spare yourself the trouble of any sneer you may be contemplating at the

thought), and found it necessary to ask a lady whether she could look

upon me in the light of a future husband, then would it be proved that

I am as I say—modest.”

I quite believed him now; and, in believing, I honoured him with a

sincerity of esteem which made my heart ache.

“As to the St. Pierre,” he went on, recovering himself, for his voice

had altered a little, “she once intended to be Madame Emanuel; and I

don’t know whither I might have been led, but for yonder little lattice

with the light. Ah, magic lattice! what miracles of discovery hast thou

wrought! Yes,” he pursued, “I have seen her rancours, her vanities, her

levities—not only here, but elsewhere: I have witnessed what bucklers

me against all her arts: I am safe from poor Zélie.”

“And my pupils,” he presently recommenced, “those blondes jeunes

filles—so mild and meek—I have seen the most reserved—romp like boys,

the demurest—snatch grapes from the walls, shake pears from the trees.

When the English teacher came, I saw her, marked her early preference

for this alley, noticed her taste for seclusion, watched her well, long

before she and I came to speaking terms; do you recollect my once

coming silently and offering you a little knot of white violets when we

were strangers?”

“I recollect it. I dried the violets, kept them, and have them still.”

“It pleased me when you took them peacefully and promptly, without

prudery—that sentiment which I ever dread to excite, and which, when it

is revealed in eye or gesture, I vindictively detest. To return. Not

only did _I_ watch you; but often—especially at eventide—another

guardian angel was noiselessly hovering near: night after night my

cousin Beck has stolen down yonder steps, and glidingly pursued your

movements when you did not see her.”

“But, Monsieur, you could not from the distance of that window see what

passed in this garden at night?”

“By moonlight I possibly might with a glass—I use a glass—but the

garden itself is open to me. In the shed, at the bottom, there is a

door leading into a court, which communicates with the college; of that

door I possess the key, and thus come and go at pleasure. This

afternoon I came through it, and found you asleep in classe; again this

evening I have availed myself of the same entrance.”

I could not help saying, “If you were a wicked, designing man, how

terrible would all this be!”

His attention seemed incapable of being arrested by this view of the

subject: he lit his cigar, and while he puffed it, leaning against a

tree, and looking at me in a cool, amused way he had when his humour

was tranquil, I thought proper to go on sermonizing him: he often

lectured me by the hour together—I did not see why I should not speak

my mind for once. So I told him my impressions concerning his

Jesuit-system.

“The knowledge it brings you is bought too dear, Monsieur; this coming

and going by stealth degrades your own dignity.”

“My dignity!” he cried, laughing; “when did you ever see me trouble my

head about my dignity? It is you, Miss Lucy, who are ‘digne.’ How

often, in your high insular presence, have I taken a pleasure in

trampling upon, what you are pleased to call, my dignity; tearing it,

scattering it to the winds, in those mad transports you witness with

such hauteur, and which I know you think very like the ravings of a

third-rate London actor.”

“Monsieur, I tell you every glance you cast from that lattice is a

wrong done to the best part of your own nature. To study the human

heart thus, is to banquet secretly and sacrilegiously on Eve’s apples.

I wish you were a Protestant.”

Indifferent to the wish, he smoked on. After a space of smiling yet

thoughtful silence, he said, rather suddenly—“I have seen other

things.”

“What other things?”

Taking the weed from his lips, he threw the remnant amongst the shrubs,

where, for a moment, it lay glowing in the gloom.

“Look, at it,” said he: “is not that spark like an eye watching you and

me?”

He took a turn down the walk; presently returning, he went on:—“I have

seen, Miss Lucy, things to me unaccountable, that have made me watch

all night for a solution, and I have not yet found it.”

The tone was peculiar; my veins thrilled; he saw me shiver.

“Are you afraid? Whether is it of my words or that red jealous eye just

winking itself out?”

“I am cold; the night grows dark and late, and the air is changed; it

is time to go in.”

“It is little past eight, but you shall go in soon. Answer me only this

question.”

Yet he paused ere he put it. The garden was truly growing dark; dusk

had come on with clouds, and drops of rain began to patter through the

trees. I hoped he would feel this, but, for the moment, he seemed too

much absorbed to be sensible of the change.

“Mademoiselle, do you Protestants believe in the supernatural?”

“There is a difference of theory and belief on this point amongst

Protestants as amongst other sects,” I answered. “Why, Monsieur, do you

ask such a question?”

“Why do you shrink and speak so faintly? Are you superstitious?”

“I am constitutionally nervous. I dislike the discussion of such

subjects. I dislike it the more because—”

“You believe?”

“No: but it has happened to me to experience impressions—”

“Since you came here?”

“Yes; not many months ago.”

“Here?—in this house?”

“Yes.”

“Bon! I am glad of it. I knew it, somehow; before you told me. I was

conscious of rapport between you and myself. You are patient, and I am

choleric; you are quiet and pale, and I am tanned and fiery; you are a

strict Protestant, and I am a sort of lay Jesuit: but we are

alike—there is affinity between us. Do you see it, Mademoiselle, when

you look in the glass? Do you observe that your forehead is shaped like

mine—that your eyes are cut like mine? Do you hear that you have some

of my tones of voice? Do you know that you have many of my looks? I

perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes,

you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with

mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle;

knottings and catchings occur—sudden breaks leave damage in the web.

But these ‘impressions,’ as you say, with English caution. I, too, have

had my ‘impressions.’”

“Monsieur, tell me them.”

“I desire no better, and intend no less. You know the legend of this

house and garden?”

“I know it. Yes. They say that hundreds of years ago a nun was buried

here alive at the foot of this very tree, beneath the ground which now

bears us.”

“And that in former days a nun’s ghost used to come and go here.”

“Monsieur, what if it comes and goes here still?”

“Something comes and goes here: there is a shape frequenting this house

by night, different to any forms that show themselves by day. I have

indisputably seen a something, more than once; and to me its conventual

weeds were a strange sight, saying more than they can do to any other

living being. A nun!”

“Monsieur, I, too, have seen it.”

“I anticipated that. Whether this nun be flesh and blood, or something

that remains when blood is dried, and flesh is wasted, her business is

as much with you as with me, probably. Well, I mean to make it out; it

has baffled me so far, but I mean to follow up the mystery. I mean—”

Instead of telling what he meant, he raised his head suddenly; I made

the same movement in the same instant; we both looked to one point—the

high tree shadowing the great berceau, and resting some of its boughs

on the roof of the first classe. There had been a strange and

inexplicable sound from that quarter, as if the arms of that tree had

swayed of their own motion, and its weight of foliage had rushed and

crushed against the massive trunk. Yes; there scarce stirred a breeze,

and that heavy tree was convulsed, whilst the feathery shrubs stood

still. For some minutes amongst the wood and leafage a rending and

heaving went on. Dark as it was, it seemed to me that something more

solid than either night-shadow, or branch-shadow, blackened out of the

boles. At last the struggle ceased. What birth succeeded this travail?

What Dryad was born of these throes? We watched fixedly. A sudden bell

rang in the house—the prayer-bell. Instantly into our alley there came,

out of the berceau, an apparition, all black and white. With a sort of

angry rush-close, close past our faces—swept swiftly the very NUN

herself! Never had I seen her so clearly. She looked tall of stature,

and fierce of gesture. As she went, the wind rose sobbing; the rain

poured wild and cold; the whole night seemed to feel her.

CHAPTER 32. The First Letter

TH