(From 'Villette')
"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 clamor (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--Labasse-courienne 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 done 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....
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 dare say 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 bed-clothes.
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, etc. 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 gray 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 favorable 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 toward her own chamber; at the
door she turned, fixing her eyes 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....
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 that 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 [the heroine's
predecessor], 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 pupil's
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, espionnage_, 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 reason 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 key-hole,
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 schoolmistress would do vastly well to
imitate it--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 the 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 of 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 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 overreached 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?