Chương Chương 39 · Old And New Acquaintance

W ACQUAINTANCE.

Fascinated as by a basilisk with three heads, I could not leave this

clique; the ground near them seemed to hold my feet. The canopy of

entwined trees held out shadow, the night whispered a pledge of

protection, and an officious lamp flashed just one beam to show me an

obscure, safe seat, and then vanished. Let me now briefly tell the

reader all that, during the past dark fortnight, I have been silently

gathering from Rumour, respecting the origin and the object of M.

Emanuel’s departure. The tale is short, and not new: its alpha is

Mammon, and its omega Interest.

If Madame Walravens was hideous as a Hindoo idol, she seemed also to

possess, in the estimation of these her votaries, an idol’s

consequence. The fact was, she had been rich—very rich; and though, for

the present, without the command of money, she was likely one day to be

rich again. At Basseterre, in Guadaloupe, she possessed a large estate,

received in dowry on her marriage sixty years ago, sequestered since

her husband’s failure; but now, it was supposed, cleared of claim, and,

if duly looked after by a competent agent of integrity, considered

capable of being made, in a few years, largely productive.

Père Silas took an interest in this prospective improvement for the

sake of religion and the church, whereof Magliore Walravens was a

devout daughter. Madame Beck, distantly related to the hunchback and

knowing her to be without family of her own, had long brooded over

contingencies with a mother’s calculating forethought, and, harshly

treated as she was by Madame Walravens, never ceased to court her for

interest’s sake. Madame Beck and the priest were thus, for money

reasons, equally and sincerely interested in the nursing of the West

Indian estate.

But the distance was great, and the climate hazardous. The competent

and upright agent wanted, must be a devoted man. Just such a man had

Madame Walravens retained for twenty years in her service, blighting

his life, and then living on him, like an old fungus; such a man had

Père Silas trained, taught, and bound to him by the ties of gratitude,

habit, and belief. Such a man Madame Beck knew, and could in some

measure influence. “My pupil,” said Père Silas, “if he remains in

Europe, runs risk of apostacy, for he has become entangled with a

heretic.” Madame Beck made also her private comment, and preferred in

her own breast her secret reason for desiring expatriation. The thing

she could not obtain, she desired not another to win: rather would she

destroy it. As to Madame Walravens, she wanted her money and her land,

and knew Paul, if he liked, could make the best and faithfullest

steward: so the three self-seekers banded and beset the one unselfish.

They reasoned, they appealed, they implored; on his mercy they cast

themselves, into his hands they confidingly thrust their interests.

They asked but two or three years of devotion—after that, he should

live for himself: one of the number, perhaps, wished that in the

meantime he might die.

No living being ever humbly laid his advantage at M. Emanuel’s feet, or

confidingly put it into his hands, that he spurned the trust or

repulsed the repository. What might be his private pain or inward

reluctance to leave Europe—what his calculations for his own

future—none asked, or knew, or reported. All this was a blank to me.

His conferences with his confessor I might guess; the part duty and

religion were made to play in the persuasions used, I might conjecture.

He was gone, and had made no sign. There my knowledge closed.

With my head bent, and my forehead resting on my hands, I sat amidst

grouped tree-stems and branching brushwood. Whatever talk passed

amongst my neighbours, I might hear, if I would; I was near enough; but

for some time, there was scarce motive to attend. They gossiped about

the dresses, the music, the illuminations, the fine night. I listened

to hear them say, “It is calm weather for _his_ voyage; the _Antigua_”

(his ship) “will sail prosperously.” No such remark fell; neither the

_Antigua_, nor her course, nor her passenger were named.

Perhaps the light chat scarcely interested old Madame Walravens more

than it did me; she appeared restless, turning her head now to this

side, now that, looking through the trees, and among the crowd, as if

expectant of an arrival and impatient of delay. “Où sont-ils? Pourquoi

ne viennent-ils?” I heard her mutter more than once; and at last, as if

determined to have an answer to her question—which hitherto none seemed

to mind, she spoke aloud this phrase—a phrase brief enough, simple

enough, but it sent a shock through me—“Messieurs et mesdames,” said

she, “où donc est Justine Marie?”

“Justine Marie!” What was this? Justine Marie—the dead nun—where was

she? Why, in her grave, Madame Walravens—what can you want with her?

You shall go to her, but she shall not come to you.

Thus _I_ should have answered, had the response lain with me, but

nobody seemed to be of my mind; nobody seemed surprised, startled, or

at a loss. The quietest commonplace answer met the strange, the

dead-disturbing, the Witch-of-Endor query of the hunchback.

“Justine Marie,” said one, “is coming; she is in the kiosk; she will be

here presently.”

Out of this question and reply sprang a change in the chat—chat it

still remained, easy, desultory, familiar gossip. Hint, allusion,

comment, went round the circle, but all so broken, so dependent on

references to persons not named, or circumstances not defined, that

listen as intently as I would—and I _did_ listen _now_ with a fated

interest—I could make out no more than that some scheme was on foot, in

which this ghostly Justine Marie—dead or alive—was concerned. This

family-junta seemed grasping at her somehow, for some reason; there

seemed question of a marriage, of a fortune—for whom I could not quite

make out—perhaps for Victor Kint, perhaps for Josef Emanuel—both were

bachelors. Once I thought the hints and jests rained upon a young

fair-haired foreigner of the party, whom they called Heinrich Mühler.

Amidst all the badinage, Madame Walravens still obtruded from time to

time, hoarse, cross-grained speeches; her impatience being diverted

only by an implacable surveillance of Désirée, who could not stir but

the old woman menaced her with her staff.

“La voilà!” suddenly cried one of the gentlemen, “voilà Justine Marie

qui arrive!”

This moment was for me peculiar. I called up to memory the pictured nun

on the panel; present to my mind was the sad love-story; I saw in

thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of the alley, the

strange birth of the berceau; I underwent a presentiment of discovery,

a strong conviction of coming disclosure. Ah! when imagination once

runs riot where do we stop? What winter tree so bare and

branchless—what way-side, hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy,

a passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in

spirituality, and make of it a phantom?

With solemn force pressed on my heart, the expectation of mystery

breaking up: hitherto I had seen this spectre only through a glass

darkly; now was I to behold it face to face. I leaned forward; I

looked.

“She comes!” cried Josef Emanuel.

The circle opened as if opening to admit a new and welcome member. At

this instant a torch chanced to be carried past; its blaze aided the

pale moon in doing justice to the crisis, in lighting to perfection the

dénouement pressing on. Surely those near me must have felt some little

of the anxiety I felt, in degree so unmeted. Of that group the coolest

must have “held his breath for a time!” As for me, my life stood still.

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

revelation are passed by.

The flambeau glares still within a yard, held up in a park-keeper’s

hand; its long eager tongue of flame almost licks the figure of the

Expected—there—where she stands full in my sight. What is she like?

What does she wear? How does she look? Who is she?

There are many masks in the park to-night, and as the hour wears late,

so strange a feeling of revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad,

that scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to say that she is

like the nun of the attic, that she wears black skirts and white

head-clothes, that she looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that

she is a risen ghost.

All falsities—all figments! We will not deal in this gear. Let us be

honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.

_Homely_, though, is an ill-chosen word. What I see is not precisely

homely. A girl of Villette stands there—a girl fresh from her

pensionnat. She is very comely, with the beauty indigenous to this

country. She looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh. Her cheeks

are round, her eyes good; her hair is abundant. She is handsomely

dressed. She is not alone; her escort consists of three persons—two

being elderly; these she addresses as “Mon Oncle” and “Ma Tante.” She

laughs, she chats; good-humoured, buxom, and blooming, she looks, at

all points, the bourgeoise belle.

“So much for Justine Marie;” so much for ghosts and mystery: not that

this last was solved—this girl certainly is not my nun: what I saw in

the garret and garden must have been taller by a span.

We have looked at the city belle; we have cursorily glanced at the

respectable old uncle and aunt. Have we a stray glance to give to the

third member of this company? Can we spare him a moment’s notice? We

ought to distinguish him so far, reader; he has claims on us; we do not

now meet him for the first time. I clasped my hands very hard, and I

drew my breath very deep: I held in the cry, I devoured the

ejaculation, I forbade the start, I spoke and I stirred no more than a

stone; but I knew what I looked on; through the dimness left in my eyes

by many nights’ weeping, I knew him. They said he was to sail by the

_Antigua_. Madame Beck said so. She lied, or she had uttered what was

once truth, and failed to contradict it when it became false. The

_Antigua_ was gone, and there stood Paul Emanuel.

Was I glad? A huge load left me. Was it a fact to warrant joy? I know

not. Ask first what were the circumstances attendant on this respite?

How far did this delay concern _me?_ Were there not those whom it might

touch more nearly?

After all, who may this young girl, this Justine Marie, be? Not a

stranger, reader; she is known to me by sight; she visits at the Rue

Fossette: she is often of Madame Beck’s Sunday parties. She is a

relation of both the Becks and Walravens; she derives her baptismal

name from the sainted nun who would have been her aunt had she lived;

her patronymic is Sauveur; she is an heiress and an orphan, and M.

Emanuel is her guardian; some say her godfather.

The family junta wish this heiress to be married to one of their

band—which is it? Vital question—which is it?

I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught

had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable.

I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth;

I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and

daring the dread glance. O Titaness among deities! the covered outline

of thine aspect sickens often through its uncertainty, but define to us

one trait, show us one lineament, clear in awful sincerity; we may gasp

in untold terror, but with that gasp we drink in a breath of thy

divinity; our heart shakes, and its currents sway like rivers lifted by

earthquake, but we have swallowed strength. To see and know the worst

is to take from Fear her main advantage.

The Walravens’ party, augmented in numbers, now became very gay. The

gentlemen fetched refreshments from the kiosk, all sat down on the turf

under the trees; they drank healths and sentiments; they laughed, they

jested. M. Emanuel underwent some raillery, half good-humoured, half, I

thought, malicious, especially on Madame Beck’s part. I soon gathered

that his voyage had been temporarily deferred of his own will, without

the concurrence, even against the advice, of his friends; he had let

the _Antigua_ go, and had taken his berth in the _Paul et Virginie_,

appointed to sail a fortnight later. It was his reason for this resolve

which they teased him to assign, and which he would only vaguely

indicate as “the settlement of a little piece of business which he had

set his heart upon.” What _was_ this business? Nobody knew. Yes, there

was one who seemed partly, at least, in his confidence; a meaning look

passed between him and Justine Marie. “La petite va m’aider—n’est-ce

pas?” said he. The answer was prompt enough, God knows!

“Mais oui, je vous aiderai de tout mon cœur. Vous ferez de moi tout ce

que vous voudrez, mon parrain.”

And this dear “parrain” took her hand and lifted it to his grateful

lips. Upon which demonstration, I saw the light-complexioned young

Teuton, Heinrich Mühler, grow restless, as if he did not like it. He

even grumbled a few words, whereat M. Emanuel actually laughed in his

face, and with the ruthless triumph of the assured conqueror, he drew

his ward nearer to him.

M. Emanuel was indeed very joyous that night. He seemed not one whit

subdued by the change of scene and action impending. He was the true

life of the party; a little despotic, perhaps, determined to be chief

in mirth, as well as in labour, yet from moment to moment proving

indisputably his right of leadership. His was the wittiest word, the

pleasantest anecdote, the frankest laugh. Restlessly active, after his

manner, he multiplied himself to wait on all; but oh! I saw which was

his favourite. I saw at whose feet he lay on the turf, I saw whom he

folded carefully from the night air, whom he tended, watched, and

cherished as the apple of his eye.

Still, hint and raillery flew thick, and still I gathered that while M.

Paul should be absent, working for others, these others, not quite

ungrateful, would guard for him the treasure he left in Europe. Let him

bring them an Indian fortune: they would give him in return a young

bride and a rich inheritance. As for the saintly consecration, the vow

of constancy, that was forgotten: the blooming and charming Present

prevailed over the Past; and, at length, his nun was indeed buried.

Thus it must be. The revelation was indeed come. Presentiment had not

been mistaken in her impulse: there is a kind of presentiment which

never _is_ mistaken; it was I who had for a moment miscalculated; not

seeing the true bearing of the oracle, I had thought she muttered of

vision when, in truth, her prediction touched reality.

I might have paused longer upon what I saw; I might have deliberated

ere I drew inferences. Some, perhaps, would have held the premises

doubtful, the proofs insufficient; some slow sceptics would have

incredulously examined ere they conclusively accepted the project of a

marriage between a poor and unselfish man of forty, and his wealthy

ward of eighteen; but far from me such shifts and palliatives, far from

me such temporary evasion of the actual, such coward fleeing from the

dread, the swift-footed, the all-overtaking Fact, such feeble suspense

of submission to her the sole sovereign, such paltering and faltering

resistance to the Power whose errand is to march conquering and to

conquer, such traitor defection from the TRUTH.

No. I hastened to accept the whole plan. I extended my grasp and took

it all in. I gathered it to me with a sort of rage of haste, and folded

it round me, as the soldier struck on the field folds his colours about

his breast. I invoked Conviction to nail upon me the certainty,

abhorred while embraced, to fix it with the strongest spikes her

strongest strokes could drive; and when the iron had entered well my

soul, I stood up, as I thought, renovated.

In my infatuation, I said, “Truth, you are a good mistress to your

faithful servants! While a Lie pressed me, how I suffered! Even when

the Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the fancy, and warm

to the feelings, it wasted me with hourly torment. The persuasion that

affection was won could not be divorced from the dread that, by another

turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth stripped away Falsehood, and

Flattery, and Expectancy, and here I stand—free!”

Nothing remained now but to take my freedom to my chamber, to carry it

with me to my bed and see what I could make of it. The play was not

yet, indeed, quite played out. I might have waited and watched longer

that love-scene under the trees, that sylvan courtship. Had there been

nothing of love in the demonstration, my Fancy in this hour was so

generous, so creative, she could have modelled for it the most salient

lineaments, and given it the deepest life and highest colour of

passion. But I _would_ not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would

not violate my nature. And then—something tore me so cruelly under my

shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and

talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt

jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr.

John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears,

while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of harmony still

acknowledged in it a charm. This was an outrage. The love born of

beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare

to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life

after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy,

consolidated by affection’s pure and durable alloy, submitted by

intellect to intellect’s own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own

process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at

Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in

_this_ Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its

culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.

I turned from the group of trees and the “merrie companie” in its

shade. Midnight was long past; the concert was over, the crowds were

thinning. I followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and well-lit

Haute-Ville (still well lit, this it seems was to be a “nuit blanche”

in Villette), I sought the dim lower quarter.

Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moonlight—forgotten in the

park—here once more flowed in upon perception. High she rode, and calm

and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fête, the

fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for

an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival

lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet,

bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray

she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting. She

and those stars seemed to me at once the types and witnesses of truth

all regnant. The night-sky lit her reign: like its slow-wheeling

progress, advanced her victory—that onward movement which has been, and

is, and will be from eternity to eternity.

These oil-twinkling streets are very still: I like them for their

lowliness and peace. Homeward-bound burghers pass me now and then, but

these companies are pedestrians, make little noise, and are soon gone.

So well do I love Villette under her present aspect, not willingly

would I re-enter under a roof, but that I am bent on pursuing my

strange adventure to a successful close, and quietly regaining my bed

in the great dormitory, before Madame Beck comes home.

Only one street lies between me and the Rue Fossette; as I enter it,

for the first time, the sound of a carriage tears up the deep peace of

this quarter. It comes this way—comes very fast. How loud sounds its

rattle on the paved path! The street is narrow, and I keep carefully to

the causeway. The carriage thunders past, but what do I see, or fancy I

see, as it rushes by? Surely something white fluttered from that

window—surely a hand waved a handkerchief. Was that signal meant for

me? Am I known? Who could recognise me? That is not M. de

Bassompierre’s carriage, nor Mrs. Bretton’s; and besides, neither the

Hôtel Crécy nor the château of La Terrasse lies in that direction.

Well, I have no time for conjecture; I must hurry home.

Gaining the Rue Fossette, reaching the pensionnat, all there was still;

no fiacre had yet arrived with Madame and Désirée. I had left the great

door ajar; should I find it thus? Perhaps the wind or some other

accident may have thrown it to with sufficient force to start the

spring-bolt? In that case, hopeless became admission; my adventure must

issue in catastrophe. I lightly pushed the heavy leaf; would it yield?

Yes. As soundless, as unresisting, as if some propitious genius had

waited on a sesame-charm, in the vestibule within. Entering with bated

breath, quietly making all fast, shoelessly mounting the staircase, I

sought the dormitory, and reached my couch.

Ay! I reached it, and once more drew a free inspiration. The next

moment, I almost shrieked—almost, but not quite, thank Heaven!

Throughout the dormitory, throughout the house, there reigned at this

hour the stillness of death. All slept, and in such hush, it seemed

that none dreamed. Stretched on the nineteen beds lay nineteen forms,

at full-length and motionless. On mine—the twentieth couch—nothing

_ought_ to have lain: I had left it void, and void should have found

it. What, then; do I see between the half-drawn curtains? What dark,

usurping shape, supine, long, and strange? Is it a robber who has made

his way through the open street-door, and lies there in wait? It looks

very black, I think it looks—not human. Can it be a wandering dog that

has come in from the street and crept and nestled hither? Will it

spring, will it leap out if I approach? Approach I must. Courage! One

step!—

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

the old phantom—the NUN.

A cry at this moment might have ruined me. Be the spectacle what it

might, I could afford neither consternation, scream, nor swoon.

Besides, I was not overcome. Tempered by late incidents, my nerves

disdained hysteria. Warm from illuminations, and music, and thronging

thousands, thoroughly lashed up by a new scourge, I defied spectra. In

a moment, without exclamation, I had rushed on the haunted couch;

nothing leaped out, or sprung, or stirred; all the movement was mine,

so was all the life, the reality, the substance, the force; as my

instinct felt. I tore her up—the incubus! I held her on high—the

goblin! I shook her loose—the mystery! And down she fell—down all

around me—down in shreds and fragments—and I trode upon her.

Here again—behold the branchless tree, the unstabled Rosinante; the

film of cloud, the flicker of moonshine. The long nun proved a long

bolster dressed in a long black stole, and artfully invested with a

white veil. The garments in very truth, strange as it may seem, were

genuine nun’s garments, and by some hand they had been disposed with a

view to illusion. Whence came these vestments? Who contrived this

artifice? These questions still remained. To the head-bandage was

pinned a slip of paper: it bore in pencil these mocking words—

“The nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe her wardrobe. She will be

seen in the Rue Fossette no more.”

And what and who was she that had haunted me? She, I had actually seen

three times. Not a woman of my acquaintance had the stature of that

ghost. She was not of a female height. Not to any man I knew could the

machination, for a moment, be attributed.

Still mystified beyond expression, but as thoroughly, as suddenly,

relieved from all sense of the spectral and unearthly; scorning also to

wear out my brain with the fret of a trivial though insoluble riddle, I

just bundled together stole, veil, and bandages, thrust them beneath my

pillow, lay down, listened till I heard the wheels of Madame’s

home-returning fiacre, then turned, and worn out by many nights’

vigils, conquered, too, perhaps, by the now reacting narcotic, I deeply

slept.

CHAPTER 40. The Happy Pair

THE HAPP