Kabanata Kabanata 8 · Madame Beck
she has
some marmots whom you might look after; she wants an English
gouvernante, or was wanting one two months ago.”
Who Madame Beck was, where she lived, I knew not; I had asked, but the
question passed unheard: Miss Fanshawe, hurried away by her friends,
left it unanswered. I presumed Villette to be her residence—to Villette
I would go. The distance was forty miles. I knew I was catching at
straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I
would have caught at cobwebs. Having inquired about the means of
travelling to Villette, and secured a seat in the diligence, I departed
on the strength of this outline—this shadow of a project. Before you
pronounce on the rashness of the proceeding, reader, look back to the
point whence I started; consider the desert I had left, note how little
I perilled: mine was the game where the player cannot lose and may win.
Of an artistic temperament, I deny that I am; yet I must possess
something of the artist’s faculty of making the most of present
pleasure: that is to say, when it is of the kind to my taste. I enjoyed
that day, though we travelled slowly, though it was cold, though it
rained. Somewhat bare, flat, and treeless was the route along which our
journey lay; and slimy canals crept, like half-torpid green snakes,
beside the road; and formal pollard willows edged level fields, tilled
like kitchen-garden beds. The sky, too, was monotonously gray; the
atmosphere was stagnant and humid; yet amidst all these deadening
influences, my fancy budded fresh and my heart basked in sunshine.
These feelings, however, were well kept in check by the secret but
ceaseless consciousness of anxiety lying in wait on enjoyment, like a
tiger crouched in a jungle. The breathing of that beast of prey was in
my ear always; his fierce heart panted close against mine; he never
stirred in his lair but I felt him: I knew he waited only for sun-down
to bound ravenous from his ambush.
I had hoped we might reach Villette ere night set in, and that thus I
might escape the deeper embarrassment which obscurity seems to throw
round a first arrival at an unknown bourne; but, what with our slow
progress and long stoppages—what with a thick fog and small, dense
rain—darkness, that might almost be felt, had settled on the city by
the time we gained its suburbs.
I know we passed through a gate where soldiers were stationed—so much I
could see by lamplight; then, having left behind us the miry Chaussée,
we rattled over a pavement of strangely rough and flinty surface. At a
bureau, the diligence stopped, and the passengers alighted. My first
business was to get my trunk; a small matter enough, but important to
me. Understanding that it was best not to be importunate or over-eager
about luggage, but to wait and watch quietly the delivery of other
boxes till I saw my own, and then promptly claim and secure it, I stood
apart; my eye fixed on that part of the vehicle in which I had seen my
little portmanteau safely stowed, and upon which piles of additional
bags and boxes were now heaped. One by one, I saw these removed,
lowered, and seized on.
I was sure mine ought to be by this time visible: it was not. I had
tied on the direction-card with a piece of green ribbon, that I might
know it at a glance: not a fringe or fragment of green was perceptible.
Every package was removed; every tin-case and brown-paper parcel; the
oilcloth cover was lifted; I saw with distinct vision that not an
umbrella, cloak, cane, hat-box or band-box remained.
And my portmanteau, with my few clothes and little pocket-book
enclasping the remnant of my fifteen pounds, where were they?
I ask this question now, but I could not ask it then. I could say
nothing whatever; not possessing a phrase of _speaking_ French: and it
was French, and French only, the whole world seemed now gabbling around
me. _What_ should I do? Approaching the conductor, I just laid my hand
on his arm, pointed to a trunk, thence to the diligence-roof, and tried
to express a question with my eyes. He misunderstood me, seized the
trunk indicated, and was about to hoist it on the vehicle.
“Let that alone—will you?” said a voice in good English; then, in
correction, “Qu’est-ce que vous faîtes donc? Cette malle est à moi.”
But I had heard the Fatherland accents; they rejoiced my heart; I
turned: “Sir,” said I, appealing to the stranger, without, in my
distress, noticing what he was like, “I cannot speak French. May I
entreat you to ask this man what he has done with my trunk?”
Without discriminating, for the moment, what sort of face it was to
which my eyes were raised and on which they were fixed, I felt in its
expression half-surprise at my appeal and half-doubt of the wisdom of
interference.
“_Do_ ask him; I would do as much for you,” said I.
I don’t know whether he smiled, but he said in a gentlemanly tone—that
is to say, a tone not hard nor terrifying,—“What sort of trunk was
yours?”
I described it, including in my description the green ribbon. And
forthwith he took the conductor under hand, and I felt, through all the
storm of French which followed, that he raked him fore and aft.
Presently he returned to me.
“The fellow avers he was overloaded, and confesses that he removed your
trunk after you saw it put on, and has left it behind at Boue-Marine
with other parcels; he has promised, however, to forward it to-morrow;
the day after, therefore, you will find it safe at this bureau.”
“Thank you,” said I: but my heart sank.
Meantime what should I do? Perhaps this English gentleman saw the
failure of courage in my face; he inquired kindly, “Have you any
friends in this city?”
“No, and I don’t know where to go.”
There was a little pause, in the course of which, as he turned more
fully to the light of a lamp above him, I saw that he was a young,
distinguished, and handsome man; he might be a lord, for anything I
knew: nature had made him good enough for a prince, I thought. His face
was very pleasant; he looked high but not arrogant, manly but not
overbearing. I was turning away, in the deep consciousness of all
absence of claim to look for further help from such a one as he.
“Was all your money in your trunk?” he asked, stopping me.
How thankful was I to be able to answer with truth—“No. I have enough
in my purse” (for I had near twenty francs) “to keep me at a quiet inn
till the day after to-morrow; but I am quite a stranger in Villette,
and don’t know the streets and the inns.”
“I can give you the address of such an inn as you want,” said he; “and
it is not far off: with my direction you will easily find it.”
He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a few words and gave it to
me. I _did_ think him kind; and as to distrusting him, or his advice,
or his address, I should almost as soon have thought of distrusting the
Bible. There was goodness in his countenance, and honour in his bright
eyes.
“Your shortest way will be to follow the Boulevard and cross the park,”
he continued; “but it is too late and too dark for a woman to go
through the park alone; I will step with you thus far.”
He moved on, and I followed him, through the darkness and the small
soaking rain. The Boulevard was all deserted, its path miry, the water
dripping from its trees; the park was black as midnight. In the double
gloom of trees and fog, I could not see my guide; I could only follow
his tread. Not the least fear had I: I believe I would have followed
that frank tread, through continual night, to the world’s end.
“Now,” said he, when the park was traversed, “you will go along this
broad street till you come to steps; two lamps will show you where they
are: these steps you will descend: a narrower street lies below;
following that, at the bottom you will find your inn. They speak
English there, so your difficulties are now pretty well over.
Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir,” said I: “accept my sincerest thanks.” And we parted.
The remembrance of his countenance, which I am sure wore a light not
unbenignant to the friendless—the sound in my ear of his voice, which
spoke a nature chivalric to the needy and feeble, as well as the
youthful and fair—were a sort of cordial to me long after. He was a
true young English gentleman.
On I went, hurrying fast through a magnificent street and square, with
the grandest houses round, and amidst them the huge outline of more
than one overbearing pile; which might be palace or church—I could not
tell. Just as I passed a portico, two mustachioed men came suddenly
from behind the pillars; they were smoking cigars: their dress implied
pretensions to the rank of gentlemen, but, poor things! they were very
plebeian in soul. They spoke with insolence, and, fast as I walked,
they kept pace with me a long way. At last I met a sort of patrol, and
my dreaded hunters were turned from the pursuit; but they had driven me
beyond my reckoning: when I could collect my faculties, I no longer
knew where I was; the staircase I must long since have passed. Puzzled,
out of breath, all my pulses throbbing in inevitable agitation, I knew
not where to turn. It was terrible to think of again encountering those
bearded, sneering simpletons; yet the ground must be retraced, and the
steps sought out.
I came at last to an old and worn flight, and, taking it for granted
that this must be the one indicated, I descended them. The street into
which they led was indeed narrow, but it contained no inn. On I
wandered. In a very quiet and comparatively clean and well-paved
street, I saw a light burning over the door of a rather large house,
loftier by a story than those round it. _This_ might be the inn at
last. I hastened on: my knees now trembled under me: I was getting
quite exhausted.
No inn was this. A brass-plate embellished the great porte-cochère:
“Pensionnat de Demoiselles” was the inscription; and beneath, a name,
“Madame Beck.”
I started. About a hundred thoughts volleyed through my mind in a
moment. Yet I planned nothing, and considered nothing: I had not time.
Providence said, “Stop here; this is _your_ inn.” Fate took me in her
strong hand; mastered my will; directed my actions: I rang the
door-bell.
While I waited, I would not reflect. I fixedly looked at the
street-stones, where the door-lamp shone, and counted them and noted
their shapes, and the glitter of wet on their angles. I rang again.
They opened at last. A bonne in a smart cap stood before me.
“May I see Madame Beck?” I inquired.
I believe if I had spoken French she would not have admitted me; but,
as I spoke English, she concluded I was a foreign teacher come on
business connected with the pensionnat, and, even at that late hour,
she let me in, without a word of reluctance, or a moment of hesitation.
The next moment I sat in a cold, glittering salon, with porcelain
stove, unlit, and gilded ornaments, and polished floor. A pendule on
the mantel-piece struck nine o’clock.
A quarter of an hour passed. How fast beat every pulse in my frame! How
I turned cold and hot by turns! I sat with my eyes fixed on the door—a
great white folding-door, with gilt mouldings: I watched to see a leaf
move and open. All had been quiet: not a mouse had stirred; the white
doors were closed and motionless.
“You ayre Engliss?” said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded, so
unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a
motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a
clean, trim nightcap.
I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell
to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it
was—she had entered by a little door behind me, and, being shod with
the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor
approach)—Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when
she said, “You ayre Engliss,” and she now proceeded to work away
volubly in her own tongue. I answered in mine. She partly understood
me, but as I did not at all understand her—though we made together an
awful clamour (anything like Madame’s gift of utterance I had not
hitherto heard or imagined)—we achieved little progress. She rang, ere
long, for aid; which arrived in the shape of a “maîtresse,” who had
been partly educated in an Irish convent, and was esteemed a perfect
adept in the English language. A bluff little personage this maîtresse
was—Labassecourienne from top to toe: and how she did slaughter the
speech of Albion! However, I told her a plain tale, which she
translated. I told her how I had left my own country, intent on
extending my knowledge, and gaining my bread; how I was ready to turn
my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong or degrading;
how I would be a child’s-nurse, or a lady’s-maid, and would not refuse
even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and,
questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won her ear:
“Il n’y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d’entreprises,” said she:
“sont-elles donc intrépides ces femmes là!”
She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me—not pityingly, not
with interest: never a gleam of sympathy, or a shade of compassion,
crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt she was not one to
be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed,
consulting her judgment and studying my narrative. A bell rang.
“Voilà pour la prière du soir!” said she, and rose. Through her
interpreter, she desired me to depart now, and come back on the morrow;
but this did not suit me: I could not bear to return to the perils of
darkness and the street. With energy, yet with a collected and
controlled manner, I said, addressing herself personally, and not the
maîtresse: “Be assured, madame, that by instantly securing my services,
your interests will be served and not injured: you will find me one who
will wish to give, in her labour, a full equivalent for her wages; and
if you hire me, it will be better that I should stay here this night:
having no acquaintance in Villette, and not possessing the language of
the country, how can I secure a lodging?”
“It is true,” said she; “but at least you can give a reference?”
“None.”
She inquired after my luggage: I told her when it would arrive. She
mused. At that moment a man’s step was heard in the vestibule, hastily
proceeding to the outer door. (I shall go on with this part of my tale
as if I had understood all that passed; for though it was then scarce
intelligible to me, I heard it translated afterwards).
“Who goes out now?” demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.
“M. Paul,” replied the teacher. “He came this evening to give a reading
to the first class.”
“The very man I should at this moment most wish to see. Call him.”
The teacher ran to the salon door. M. Paul was summoned. He entered: a
small, dark and spare man, in spectacles.
“Mon cousin,” began Madame, “I want your opinion. We know your skill in
physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance.”
The little man fixed on me his spectacles: A resolute compression of
the lips, and gathering of the brow, seemed to say that he meant to see
through me, and that a veil would be no veil for him.
“I read it,” he pronounced.
“Et qu’en dites vous?”
“Mais—bien des choses,” was the oracular answer.
“Bad or good?”
“Of each kind, without doubt,” pursued the diviner.
“May one trust her word?”
“Are you negotiating a matter of importance?”
“She wishes me to engage her as bonne or gouvernante; tells a tale full
of integrity, but gives no reference.”
“She is a stranger?”
“An Englishwoman, as one may see.”
“She speaks French?”
“Not a word.”
“She understands it?”
“No.”
“One may then speak plainly in her presence?”
“Doubtless.”
He gazed steadily. “Do you need her services?”
“I could do with them. You know I am disgusted with Madame Svini.”
Still he scrutinized. The judgment, when it at last came, was as
indefinite as what had gone before it.
“Engage her. If good predominates in that nature, the action will bring
its own reward; if evil—eh bien! ma cousine, ce sera toujours une bonne
œuvre.” And with a bow and a “bon soir,” this vague arbiter of my
destiny vanished.
And Madame did engage me that very night—by God’s blessing I was spared
the necessity of passing forth again into the lonesome, dreary, hostile
street.
CHAPTER 8. Madame Beck
MADAME BECK.
Being delivered into the charge of the maîtresse, I was led through a
long narrow passage into a foreign kitchen, very clean but very
strange. It seemed to contain no means of cooking—neither fireplace nor
oven; I did not understand that the great black furnace which filled
one corner, was an efficient substitute for these. Surely pride was not
already beginning its whispers in my heart; yet I felt a sense of
relief when, instead of being left in the kitchen, as I half
anticipated, I was led forward to a small inner room termed a
“cabinet.” A cook in a jacket, a short petticoat and sabots, brought my
supper: to wit—some meat, nature unknown, served in an odd and acid,
but pleasant sauce; some chopped potatoes, made savoury with, I know
not what: vinegar and sugar, I think: a tartine, or slice of bread and
butter, and a baked pear. Being hungry, I ate and was grateful.
After the “prière du soir,” Madame herself came to have another look at
me. She desired me to follow her up-stairs. Through a series of the
queerest little dormitories—which, I heard afterwards, had once been
nuns’ cells: for the premises were in part of ancient date—and through
the oratory—a long, low, gloomy room, where a crucifix hung, pale,
against the wall, and two tapers kept dim vigils—she conducted me to an
apartment where three children were asleep in three tiny beds. A heated
stove made the air of this room oppressive; and, to mend matters, it
was scented with an odour rather strong than delicate: a perfume,
indeed, altogether surprising and unexpected under the circumstances,
being like the combination of smoke with some spirituous essence—a
smell, in short, of whisky.
Beside a table, on which flared the remnant of a candle guttering to
waste in the socket, a coarse woman, heterogeneously clad in a broad
striped showy silk dress, and a stuff apron, sat in a chair fast
asleep. To complete the picture, and leave no doubt as to the state of
matters, a bottle and an empty glass stood at the sleeping beauty’s
elbow.
Madame contemplated this remarkable tableau with great calm; she
neither smiled nor scowled; no impress of anger, disgust, or surprise,
ruffled the equality of her grave aspect; she did not even wake the
woman! Serenely pointing to a fourth bed, she intimated that it was to
be mine; then, having extinguished the candle and substituted for it a
night-lamp, she glided through an inner door, which she left ajar—the
entrance to her own chamber, a large, well-furnished apartment; as was
discernible through the aperture.
My devotions that night were all thanksgiving. Strangely had I been led
since morning—unexpectedly had I been provided for. Scarcely could I
believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since I left London,
under no other guardianship than that which protects the
passenger-bird—with no prospect but the dubious cloud-tracery of hope.
I was a light sleeper; in the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was
hushed, but a white figure stood in the room—Madame in her night-dress.
Moving without perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the
three beds; she approached me: I feigned sleep, and she studied me
long. A small pantomime ensued, curious enough. I daresay she sat a
quarter of an hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She then
drew nearer, bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and turned
back the border so as to expose my hair; she looked at my hand lying on
the bedclothes. This done, she turned to the chair where my clothes
lay: it was at the foot of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I
opened my eyes with precaution, for I own I felt curious to see how far
her taste for research would lead her. It led her a good way: every
article did she inspect. I divined her motive for this proceeding, viz.
the wish to form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer,
her station, means, neatness, &c. The end was not bad, but the means
were hardly fair or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly
turned it inside out: she counted the money in my purse; she opened a
little memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from
between the leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont’s grey hair.
To a bunch of three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box,
she accorded special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a
moment to her own room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her with
my eye: these keys, reader, were not brought back till they had left on
the toilet of the adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. All
being thus done decently and in order, my property was returned to its
place, my clothes were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the
conclusions deduced from this scrutiny? Were they favourable or
otherwise? Vain question. Madame’s face of stone (for of stone in its
present night aspect it looked: it had been human, and, as I said
before, motherly, in the salon) betrayed no response.
Her duty done—I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty—she
rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved towards her own chamber; at the
door, she turned, fixing her eye on the heroine of the bottle, who
still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs.
Svini, Anglicé or Hibernicé, Sweeny)—Mrs. Sweeny’s doom was in Madame
Beck’s eye—an immutable purpose that eye spoke: Madame’s visitations
for shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
un-English: truly I was in a foreign land.
The morrow made me further acquainted with Mrs. Sweeny. It seems she
had introduced herself to her present employer as an English lady in
reduced circumstances: a native, indeed, of Middlesex, professing to
speak the English tongue with the purest metropolitan accent.
Madame—reliant on her own infallible expedients for finding out the
truth in time—had a singular intrepidity in hiring service off-hand (as
indeed seemed abundantly proved in my own case). She received Mrs.
Sweeny as nursery-governess to her three children. I need hardly
explain to the reader that this lady was in effect a native of Ireland;
her station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had
“had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis.” I think
myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or
washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue,
curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By some means or
other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of
rather suspicious splendour—gowns of stiff and costly silk, fitting her
indifferently, and apparently made for other proportions than those
they now adorned; caps with real lace borders, and—the chief item in
the inventory, the spell by which she struck a certain awe through the
household, quelling the otherwise scornfully disposed teachers and
servants, and, so long as her broad shoulders _wore_ the folds of that
majestic drapery, even influencing Madame herself—_a real Indian
shawl_—“un véritable cachemire,” as Madame Beck said, with unmixed
reverence and amaze. I feel quite sure that without this “cachemire”
she would not have kept her footing in the pensionnat for two days: by
virtue of it, and it only, she maintained the same a month.
But when Mrs. Sweeny knew that I was come to fill her shoes, then it
was that she declared herself—then did she rise on Madame Beck in her
full power—then come down on me with her concentrated weight. Madame
bore this revelation and visitation so well, so stoically, that I for
very shame could not support it otherwise than with composure. For one
little moment Madame Beck absented herself from the room; ten minutes
after, an agent of the police stood in the midst of us. Mrs. Sweeny and
her effects were removed. Madame’s brow had not been ruffled during the
scene—her lips had not dropped one sharply-accented word.
This brisk little affair of the dismissal was all settled before
breakfast: order to march given, policeman called, mutineer expelled;
“chambre d’enfans” fumigated and cleansed, windows thrown open, and
every trace of the accomplished Mrs. Sweeny—even to the fine essence
and spiritual fragrance which gave token so subtle and so fatal of the
head and front of her offending—was annihilated from the Rue Fossette:
all this, I say, was done between the moment of Madame Beck’s issuing
like Aurora from her chamber, and that in which she coolly sat down to
pour out her first cup of coffee.
About noon, I was summoned to dress Madame. (It appeared my place was
to be a hybrid between gouvernante and lady’s-maid.) Till noon, she
haunted the house in her wrapping-gown, shawl, and soundless slippers.
How would the lady-chief of an English school approve this custom?
The dressing of her hair puzzled me; she had plenty of it: auburn,
unmixed with grey: though she was forty years old. Seeing my
embarrassment, she said, “You have not been a femme-de-chambre in your
own country?” And taking the brush from my hand, and setting me aside,
not ungently or disrespectfully, she arranged it herself. In performing
other offices of the toilet, she half-directed, half-aided me, without
the least display of temper or impatience. N.B.—That was the first and
last time I was required to dress her. Henceforth, on Rosine, the
portress, devolved that duty.
When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short
and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way; that is, with
the grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh
and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk
dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she
looked well, though a little bourgeoise; as bourgeoise, indeed, she
was. I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her
face offered contrast, too: its features were by no means such as are
usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness
and repose: their outline was stern: her forehead was high but narrow;
it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her
peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the
heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could
be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with
all their tenderness and temerity, I felt somehow that Madame would be
the right sort of Minos in petticoats.
In the long run, I found she was something else in petticoats too. Her
name was Modeste Maria Beck, née Kint: it ought to have been Ignacia.
She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of good. There never
was a mistress whose rule was milder. I was told that she never once
remonstrated with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny, despite her tipsiness,
disorder, and general neglect; yet Mrs. Sweeny had to go the moment her
departure became convenient. I was told, too, that neither masters nor
teachers were found fault with in that establishment; yet both masters
and teachers were often changed: they vanished and others filled their
places, none could well explain how.
The establishment was both a pensionnat and an externat: the externes
or day-pupils exceeded one hundred in number; the boarders were about a
score. Madame must have possessed high administrative powers: she ruled
all these, together with four teachers, eight masters, six servants,
and three children, managing at the same time to perfection the pupils’
parents and friends; and that without apparent effort; without bustle,
fatigue, fever, or any symptom of undue excitement: occupied she
always was—busy, rarely. It is true that Madame had her own system for
managing and regulating this mass of machinery; and a very pretty
system it was: the reader has seen a specimen of it, in that small
affair of turning my pocket inside out, and reading my private
memoranda. “Surveillance,” “espionage,”—these were her watchwords.
Still, Madame knew what honesty was, and liked it—that is, when it did
not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest.
She had a respect for “Angleterre;” and as to “les Anglaises,” she
would have the women of no other country about her own children, if she
could help it.
Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and counter-plotting,
spying and receiving the reports of spies all day, she would come up to
my room—a trace of real weariness on her brow—and she would sit down
and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in
English: the Lord’s Prayer, and the hymn beginning “Gentle Jesus,”
these little Catholics were permitted to repeat at my knee; and, when I
had put them to bed, she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French
to be able to understand, and even answer her) about England and
Englishwomen, and the reasons for what she was pleased to term their
superior intelligence, and more real and reliable probity. Very good
sense she often showed; very sound opinions she often broached: she
seemed to know that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind
ignorance, and under a surveillance that left them no moment and no
corner for retirement, was not the best way to make them grow up honest
and modest women; but she averred that ruinous consequences would ensue
if any other method were tried with continental children: they were so
accustomed to restraint, that relaxation, however guarded, would be
misunderstood and fatally presumed on. She was sick, she would declare,
of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after
discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move
away on her “souliers de silence,” and glide ghost-like through the
house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole,
listening behind every door.
After all, Madame’s system was not bad—let me do her justice. Nothing
could be better than all her arrangements for the physical well-being
of her scholars. No minds were overtasked: the lessons were well
distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner; there was a
liberty of amusement, and a provision for exercise which kept the girls
healthy; the food was abundant and good: neither pale nor puny faces
were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette. She never grudged a
holiday; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, dressing, washing,
eating; her method in all these matters was easy, liberal, salutary,
and rational: many an austere English school-mistress would do vastly
well to imitate her—and I believe many would be glad to do so, if
exacting English parents would let them.
As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of course had her staff of
spies: she perfectly knew the quality of the tools she used, and while
she would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty
occasion—flinging this sort from her like refuse rind, after the orange
has been duly squeezed—I have known her fastidious in seeking pure
metal for clean uses; and when once a bloodless and rustless instrument
was found, she was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and
cotton-wool. Yet, woe be to that man or woman who relied on her one
inch beyond the point where it was her interest to be trustworthy:
interest was the master-key of Madame’s nature—the mainspring of her
motives—the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her _feelings_
appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the
appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed
her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to touch her
heart was the surest way to rouse her antipathy, and to make of her a
secret foe. It proved to her that she had no heart to be touched: it
reminded her where she was impotent and dead. Never was the distinction
between charity and mercy better exemplified than in her. While devoid
of sympathy, she had a sufficiency of rational benevolence: she would
give in the readiest manner to people she had never seen—rather,
however, to classes than to individuals. “Pour les pauvres,” she opened
her purse freely—against _the poor man_, as a rule, she kept it closed.
In philanthropic schemes for the benefit of society at large she took a
cheerful part; no private sorrow touched her: no force or mass of
suffering concentrated in one heart had power to pierce hers. Not the
agony in Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung from
her eyes one tear.
I say again, Madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That
school offered her for her powers too limited a sphere; she ought to
have swayed a nation: she should have been the leader of a turbulent
legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated
her nerves, exhausted her patience, or over-reached her astuteness. In
her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first
minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless; secret,
crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and
insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could be desired?
The sensible reader will not suppose that I gained all the knowledge
here condensed for his benefit in one month, or in one half-year. No!
what I saw at first was the thriving outside of a large and flourishing
educational establishment. Here was a great house, full of healthy,
lively girls, all well-dressed and many of them handsome, gaining
knowledge by a marvellously easy method, without painful exertion or
useless waste of spirits; not, perhaps, making very rapid progress in
anything; taking it easy, but still always employed, and never
oppressed. Here was a corps of teachers and masters, more stringently
tasked, as all the real head-labour was to be done by them, in order to
save the pupils, yet having their duties so arranged that they relieved
each other in quick succession whenever the work was severe: here, in
short, was a foreign school; of which the life, movement, and variety
made it a complete and most charming contrast to many English
institutions of the same kind.
Behind the house was a large garden, and, in summer, the pupils almost
lived out of doors amongst the rose-bushes and the fruit-trees. Under
the vast and vine-draped berceau, Madame would take her seat on summer
afternoons, and send for the classes, in turns, to sit round her and
sew and read. Meantime, masters came and went, delivering short and
lively lectures, rather than lessons, and the pupils made notes of
their instructions, or did _not_ make them—just as inclination
prompted; secure that, in case of neglect, they could copy the notes of
their companions. Besides the regular monthly _jours de sortie_, the
Catholic fête-days brought a succession of holidays all the year round;
and sometimes on a bright summer morning, or soft summer evening; the
boarders were taken out for a long walk into the country, regaled with
_gaufres_ and _vin blanc_, or new milk and _pain bis_, or _pistolets au
beurre_ (rolls) and coffee. All this seemed very pleasant, and Madame
appeared goodness itself; and the teachers not so bad but they might be
worse; and the pupils, perhaps, a little noisy and rough, but types of
health and glee.
Thus did the view appear, seen through the enchantment of distance; but
there came a time when distance was to melt for me—when I was to be
called down from my watch-tower of the nursery, whence I had hitherto
made my observations, and was to be compelled into closer intercourse
with this little world of the Rue Fossette.
I was one day sitting up-stairs, as usual, hearing the children their
English lessons, and at the same time turning a silk dress for Madame,
when she came sauntering into the room with that absorbed air and brow
of hard thought she sometimes wore, and which made her look so little
genial. Dropping into a seat opposite mine, she remained some minutes
silent. Désirée, the eldest girl, was reading to me some little essay
of Mrs. Barbauld’s, and I was making her translate currently from
English to French as she proceeded, by way of ascertaining that she
comprehended what she read: Madame listened.
Presently, without preface or prelude, she said, almost in the tone of
one making an accusation, “Meess, in England you were a governess?”
“No, Madame,” said I smiling, “you are mistaken.”
“Is this your first essay at teaching—this attempt with my children?”
I assured her it was. Again she became silent; but looking up, as I
took a pin from the cushion, I found myself an object of study: she
held me under her eye; she seemed turning me round in her
thoughts—measuring my fitness for a purpose, weighing my value in a
plan. Madame had, ere this, scrutinized all I had, and I believe she
esteemed herself cognizant of much that I was; but from that day, for
the space of about a fortnight, she tried me by new tests. She listened
at the nursery door when I was shut in with the children; she followed
me at a cautious distance when I walked out with them, stealing within
ear-shot whenever the trees of park or boulevard afforded a sufficient
screen: a strict preliminary process having thus been observed, she
made a move forward.
One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with the semblance of hurry,
she said she found herself placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the
English master, had failed to come at his hour, she feared he was ill;
the pupils were waiting in classe; there was no one to give a lesson;
should I, for once, object to giving a short dictation exercise, just
that the pupils might not have it to say they had missed their English
lesson?
“In classe, Madame?” I asked.
“Yes, in classe: in the second division.”
“Where there are sixty pupils,” said I; for I knew the number, and with
my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail
into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a
pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have
let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical
ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the
hornbook, turning silk dresses and making children’s frocks. Not that
true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had
neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to
me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from
intimate trial: the negation of severe suffering was the nearest
approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two
lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the
former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys
of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily
bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.
“Come,” said Madame, as I stooped more busily than ever over the
cutting-out of a child’s pinafore, “leave that work.”
“But Fifine wants it, Madame.”
“Fifine must want it, then, for I want _you_.”
And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me—as she
had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his
shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition—as,
too, _she_ did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether _I_
lacked them or not—she, without more ado, made me relinquish thimble
and needle; my hand was taken into hers, and I was conducted
down-stairs. When we reached the carré, a large square hall between the
dwelling-house and the pensionnat, she paused, dropped my hand, faced,
and scrutinized me. I was flushed, and tremulous from head to foot:
tell it not in Gath, I believe I was crying. In fact, the difficulties
before me were far from being wholly imaginary; some of them were real
enough; and not the least substantial lay in my want of mastery over
the medium through which I should be obliged to teach. I had, indeed,
studied French closely since my arrival in Villette; learning its
practice by day, and its theory in every leisure moment at night, to as
late an hour as the rule of the house would allow candle-light; but I
was far from yet being able to trust my powers of correct oral
expression.
“Dîtes donc,” said Madame sternly, “vous sentez vous réellement trop
faible?”
I might have said “Yes,” and gone back to nursery obscurity, and there,
perhaps, mouldered for the rest of my life; but looking up at Madame, I
saw in her countenance a something that made me think twice ere I
decided. At that instant she did not wear a woman’s aspect, but rather
a man’s. Power of a particular kind strongly limned itself in all her
traits, and that power was not my kind of power: neither sympathy, nor
congeniality, nor submission, were the emotions it awakened. I
stood—not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed. It seemed as if a
challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly
felt all the dishonour of my diffidence—all the pusillanimity of my
slackness to aspire.
“Will you,” she said, “go backward or forward?” indicating with her
hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house,
and then the great double portals of the classes or schoolrooms.
“En avant,” I said.
“But,” pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look,
from very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, “can
you face the classes, or are you over-excited?”
She sneered slightly in saying this: nervous excitability was not much
to Madame’s taste.
“I am no more excited than this stone,” I said, tapping the flag with
my toe: “or than you,” I added, returning her look.
“Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous, English girls
you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes,
franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles.”
I said: “I know; and I know, too, that though I have studied French
hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much
hesitation—too little accuracy to be able to command their respect I
shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most
ignorant. Still I mean to give the lesson.”
“They always throw over timid teachers,” said she.
“I know that too, Madame; I have heard how they rebelled against and
persecuted Miss Turner”—a poor friendless English teacher, whom Madame
had employed, and lightly discarded; and to whose piteous history I was
no stranger.
“C’est vrai,” said she, coolly. “Miss Turner had no more command over
them than a servant from the kitchen would have had. She was weak and
wavering; she had neither tact nor intelligence, decision nor dignity.
Miss Turner would not do for these girls at all.”
I made no reply, but advanced to the closed schoolroom door.
“You will not expect aid from me, or from any one,” said Madame. “That
would at once set you down as incompetent for your office.”
I opened the door, let her pass with courtesy, and followed her. There
were three schoolrooms, all large. That dedicated to the second
division, where I was to figure, was considerably the largest, and
accommodated an assemblage more numerous, more turbulent, and
infinitely more unmanageable than the other two. In after days, when I
knew the ground better, I used to think sometimes (if such a comparison
may be permitted), that the quiet, polished, tame first division was to
the robust, riotous, demonstrative second division, what the English
House of Lords is to the House of Commons.
The first glance informed me that many of the pupils were more than
girls—quite young women; I knew that some of them were of noble family
(as nobility goes in Labassecour), and I was well convinced that not
one amongst them was ignorant of my position in Madame’s household. As
I mounted the estràde (a low platform, raised a step above the
flooring), where stood the teacher’s chair and desk, I beheld opposite
to me a row of eyes and brows that threatened stormy weather—eyes full
of an insolent light, and brows hard and unblushing as marble. The
continental “female” is quite a different being to the insular “female”
of the same age and class: I never saw such eyes and brows in England.
Madame Beck introduced me in one cool phrase, sailed from the room, and
left me alone in my glory.
I shall never forget that first lesson, nor all the under-current of
life and character it opened up to me. Then first did I begin rightly
to see the wide difference that lies between the novelist’s and poet’s
ideal “jeune fille” and the said “jeune fille” as she really is.
It seems that three titled belles in the first row had sat down
predetermined that a _bonne d’enfants_ should not give them lessons in
English. They knew they had succeeded in expelling obnoxious teachers
before now; they knew that Madame would at any time throw overboard a
professeur or maitresse who became unpopular with the school—that she
never assisted a weak official to retain his place—that if he had not
strength to fight, or tact to win his way, down he went: looking at
“Miss Snowe,” they promised themselves an easy victory.
Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angélique opened the campaign by
a series of titterings and whisperings; these soon swelled into murmurs
and short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up and echoed more
loudly. This growing revolt of sixty against one, soon became
oppressive enough; my command of French being so limited, and exercised
under such cruel constraint.
Could I but have spoken in my own tongue, I felt as if I might have
gained a hearing; for, in the first place, though I knew I looked a
poor creature, and in many respects actually was so, yet nature had
given me a voice that could make itself heard, if lifted in excitement
or deepened by emotion. In the second place, while I had no flow, only
a hesitating trickle of language, in ordinary circumstances, yet—under
stimulus such as was now rife through the mutinous mass—I could, in
English, have rolled out readily phrases stigmatizing their proceedings
as such proceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with some
sarcasm, flavoured with contemptuous bitterness for the ringleaders,
and relieved with easy banter for the weaker but less knavish
followers, it seemed to me that one might possibly get command over
this wild herd, and bring them into training, at least. All I could now
do was to walk up to Blanche—Mademoiselle de Melcy, a young baronne—the
eldest, tallest, handsomest, and most vicious—stand before her desk,
take from under her hand her exercise-book, remount the estrade,
deliberately read the composition, which I found very stupid, and, as
deliberately, and in the face of the whole school, tear the blotted
page in two.
This action availed to draw attention and check noise. One girl alone,
quite in the background, persevered in the riot with undiminished
energy. I looked at her attentively. She had a pale face, hair like
night, broad strong eyebrows, decided features, and a dark, mutinous,
sinister eye: I noted that she sat close by a little door, which door,
I was well aware, opened into a small closet where books were kept. She
was standing up for the purpose of conducting her clamour with freer
energies. I measured her stature and calculated her strength. She
seemed both tall and wiry; but, so the conflict were brief and the
attack unexpected, I thought I might manage her.
Advancing up the room, looking as cool and careless as I possibly
could, in short, _ayant l’air de rien_, I slightly pushed the door and
found it was ajar. In an instant, and with sharpness, I had turned on
her. In another instant she occupied the closet, the door was shut, and
the key in my pocket.
It so happened that this girl, Dolores by name, and a Catalonian by
race, was the sort of character at once dreaded and hated by all her
associates; the act of summary justice above noted proved popular:
there was not one present but, in her heart, liked to see it done. They
were stilled for a moment; then a smile—not a laugh—passed from desk to
desk: then—when I had gravely and tranquilly returned to the estrade,
courteously requested silence, and commenced a dictation as if nothing
at all had happened—the pens travelled peacefully over the pages, and
the remainder of the lesson passed in order and industry.
“C’est bien,” said Madame Beck, when I came out of class, hot and a
little exhausted. “Ca ira.”
She had been listening and peeping through a spy-hole the whole time.
From that day I ceased to be nursery governess, and became English
teacher. Madame raised my salary; but she got thrice the work out of me
she had extracted from Mr. Wilson, at half the expense.
CH