Chương Chương 7 · Villette

he great capital

of the great kingdom of Labassecour.

“Do you like Villette?” I asked.

“Pretty well. The natives, you know, are intensely stupid and vulgar;

but there are some nice English families.”

“Are you in a school?”

“Yes.”

“A good one?”

“Oh, no! horrid: but I go out every Sunday, and care nothing about the

_maîtresses_ or the _professeurs_, or the _élèves_, and send lessons

_au diable_ (one daren’t say that in English, you know, but it sounds

quite right in French); and thus I get on charmingly…. You are laughing

at me again?”

“No—I am only smiling at my own thoughts.”

“What are they?” (Without waiting for an answer)—“Now, _do_ tell me

where you are going.”

“Where Fate may lead me. My business is to earn a living where I can

find it.”

“To earn!” (in consternation) “are you poor, then?”

“As poor as Job.”

(After a pause) “Bah! how unpleasant! But _I_ know what it is to be

poor: they are poor enough at home—papa and mamma, and all of them.

Papa is called Captain Fanshawe; he is an officer on half-pay, but

well-descended, and some of our connections are great enough; but my

uncle and godpapa De Bassompierre, who lives in France, is the only one

that helps us: he educates us girls. I have five sisters and three

brothers. By-and-by we are to marry—rather elderly gentlemen, I

suppose, with cash: papa and mamma manage that. My sister Augusta is

married now to a man much older-looking than papa. Augusta is very

beautiful—not in my style—but dark; her husband, Mr. Davies, had the

yellow fever in India, and he is still the colour of a guinea; but then

he is rich, and Augusta has her carriage and establishment, and we all

think she has done perfectly well. Now, this is better than ‘earning a

living,’ as you say. By the way, are you clever?”

“No—not at all.”

“You can play, sing, speak three or four languages?”

“By no means.”

“Still I think you are clever” (a pause and a yawn).

“Shall you be sea-sick?”

“Shall you?”

“Oh, immensely! as soon as ever we get in sight of the sea: I begin,

indeed, to feel it already. I shall go below; and won’t I order about

that fat odious stewardess! Heureusement je sais faire aller mon

monde.”

Down she went.

It was not long before the other passengers followed her: throughout

the afternoon I remained on deck alone. When I recall the tranquil, and

even happy mood in which I passed those hours, and remember, at the

same time, the position in which I was placed; its hazardous—some would

have said its hopeless—character; I feel that, as—

“Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars—a cage,”

so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so

long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long,

especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her

star.

I was not sick till long after we passed Margate, and deep was the

pleasure I drank in with the sea-breeze; divine the delight I drew from

the heaving Channel waves, from the sea-birds on their ridges, from the

white sails on their dark distance, from the quiet yet beclouded sky,

overhanging all. In my reverie, methought I saw the continent of

Europe, like a wide dream-land, far away. Sunshine lay on it, making

the long coast one line of gold; tiniest tracery of clustered town and

snow-gleaming tower, of woods deep massed, of heights serrated, of

smooth pasturage and veiny stream, embossed the metal-bright prospect.

For background, spread a sky, solemn and dark blue, and—grand with

imperial promise, soft with tints of enchantment—strode from north to

south a God-bent bow, an arch of hope.

Cancel the whole of that, if you please, reader—or rather let it stand,

and draw thence a moral—an alliterative, text-hand copy—

Day-dreams are delusions of the demon.

Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into the cabin.

Miss Fanshawe’s berth chanced to be next mine; and, I am sorry to say,

she tormented me with an unsparing selfishness during the whole time of

our mutual distress. Nothing could exceed her impatience and

fretfulness. The Watsons, who were very sick too, and on whom the

stewardess attended with shameless partiality, were stoics compared

with her. Many a time since have I noticed, in persons of Ginevra

Fanshawe’s light, careless temperament, and fair, fragile style of

beauty, an entire incapacity to endure: they seem to sour in adversity,

like small beer in thunder. The man who takes such a woman for his

wife, ought to be prepared to guarantee her an existence all sunshine.

Indignant at last with her teasing peevishness, I curtly requested her

“to hold her tongue.” The rebuff did her good, and it was observable

that she liked me no worse for it.

As dark night drew on, the sea roughened: larger waves swayed strong

against the vessel’s side. It was strange to reflect that blackness and

water were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing straight on her

pathless way, despite noise, billow, and rising gale. Articles of

furniture began to fall about, and it became needful to lash them to

their places; the passengers grew sicker than ever; Miss Fanshawe

declared, with groans, that she must die.

“Not just yet, honey,” said the stewardess. “We’re just in port.”

Accordingly, in another quarter of an hour, a calm fell upon us all;

and about midnight the voyage ended.

I was sorry: yes, I was sorry. My resting-time was past; my

difficulties—my stringent difficulties—recommenced. When I went on

deck, the cold air and black scowl of the night seemed to rebuke me for

my presumption in being where I was: the lights of the foreign sea-port

town, glimmering round the foreign harbour, met me like unnumbered

threatening eyes. Friends came on board to welcome the Watsons; a whole

family of friends surrounded and bore away Miss Fanshawe; I—but I dared

not for one moment dwell on a comparison of positions.

Yet where should I go? I must go somewhere. Necessity dare not be nice.

As I gave the stewardess her fee—and she seemed surprised at receiving

a coin of more value than, from such a quarter, her coarse calculations

had probably reckoned on—I said, “Be kind enough to direct me to some

quiet, respectable inn, where I can go for the night.”

She not only gave me the required direction, but called a

commissionaire, and bid him take charge of me, and—_not_ my trunk, for

that was gone to the custom-house.

I followed this man along a rudely-paved street, lit now by a fitful

gleam of moonlight; he brought me to the inn. I offered him sixpence,

which he refused to take; supposing it not enough, I changed it for a

shilling; but this also he declined, speaking rather sharply, in a

language to me unknown. A waiter, coming forward into the lamp-lit

inn-passage, reminded me, in broken English, that my money was foreign

money, not current here. I gave him a sovereign to change. This little

matter settled, I asked for a bedroom; supper I could not take: I was

still sea-sick and unnerved, and trembling all over. How deeply glad I

was when the door of a very small chamber at length closed on me and my

exhaustion. Again I might rest: though the cloud of doubt would be as

thick to-morrow as ever; the necessity for exertion more urgent, the

peril (of destitution) nearer, the conflict (for existence) more

severe.

CHAPTER 7. Villette

VILLETTE.

I awoke next morning with courage revived and spirits refreshed:

physical debility no longer enervated my judgment; my mind felt prompt

and clear.

Just as I finished dressing, a tap came to the door: I said, “Come in,”

expecting the chambermaid, whereas a rough man walked in and said,—

“Gif me your keys, Meess.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Gif!” said he impatiently; and as he half-snatched them from my hand,

he added, “All right! haf your tronc soon.”

Fortunately it did turn out all right: he was from the custom-house.

Where to go to get some breakfast I could not tell; but I proceeded,

not without hesitation, to descend.

I now observed, what I had not noticed in my extreme weariness last

night, viz. that this inn was, in fact, a large hotel; and as I slowly

descended the broad staircase, halting on each step (for I was in

wonderfully little haste to get down), I gazed at the high ceiling

above me, at the painted walls around, at the wide windows which filled

the house with light, at the veined marble I trod (for the steps were

all of marble, though uncarpeted and not very clean), and contrasting

all this with the dimensions of the closet assigned to me as a chamber,

with the extreme modesty of its appointments, I fell into a

philosophizing mood.

Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by waiters and chamber-maids

in proportioning the accommodation to the guest. How could inn-servants

and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that I, for instance,

was an individual of no social significance, and little burdened by

cash? They _did_ know it evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in

a moment’s calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional

value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise

from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty

well under its pressure.

Having at last landed in a great hall, full of skylight glare, I made

my way somehow to what proved to be the coffee-room. It cannot be

denied that on entering this room I trembled somewhat; felt uncertain,

solitary, wretched; wished to Heaven I knew whether I was doing right

or wrong; felt convinced that it was the last, but could not help

myself. Acting in the spirit and with the calm of a fatalist, I sat

down at a small table, to which a waiter presently brought me some

breakfast; and I partook of that meal in a frame of mind not greatly

calculated to favour digestion. There were many other people

breakfasting at other tables in the room; I should have felt rather

more happy if amongst them all I could have seen any women; however,

there was not one—all present were men. But nobody seemed to think I

was doing anything strange; one or two gentlemen glanced at me

occasionally, but none stared obtrusively: I suppose if there was

anything eccentric in the business, they accounted for it by this word

“Anglaise!”

Breakfast over, I must again move—in what direction? “Go to Villette,”

said an inward voice; prompted doubtless by the recollection of this

slight sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss Fanshawe, as

she bid me good-by: “I wish you would come to Mad