THE LEAVE-TAKING--THE SCENE IN THE
CLASS-ROOM--CHARLOTTE LEAVES BRUSSELS
Two other events that we know must have happened within a few days of
Charlotte's departure from Brussels, 2nd January 1844, are lit up by the
emotions painted in _Villette._ We cannot doubt that these emotions were
suffered by the woman of genius who describes them, because it is, not
imagination, but remembrance, that has given these pages the magical
touch of life, the 'vibration' that translates words 'into feelings,' so
that we are not readers, but witnesses, of what this tormented heart
endures.
Anguish of suspense; heart-sickness of hope deferred; despair, following
on repeated disappointment; rage and indignation at the cruelty and
injustice of this outrage done to a Love, that has wronged no one,
robbed no one, that has no desire to inflict injury on others; yet that
is refused the right that even the condemned criminal is _not_
refused,--to bid farewell to what he holds most dear on earth before he
goes forth to execution--all these feelings are painted in the wonderful
pages, where the circumstances of the story nevertheless are legendary,
and belong to the parable of Lucy Snowe: but where the sufferings Lucy
endures on the eve of her separation from Paul Emanuel were facts stored
up in the experiences of Charlotte Brontë.
Like the incident of Lucy Snowe's 'Confession,' the passages that in
_Villette_ describe the efforts made by Madame Beck and the Jesuit, Père
Silas, to prevent Paul Emanuel from bidding Lucy farewell, before he
starts for his voyage to Basseterres in Guadeloupe, are pages from the
spiritual life of Charlotte Brontë--taken out of their proper frame of
circumstances, and altered in some important details. But outside of
these alterations, one recognises their truthfulness, in the vivid light
they throw upon the facts told us in Charlotte's correspondence.
In the novel, Paul Emanuel is expected to visit the class-room at a
certain hour and to take farewell of his pupils. In connection with the
real events, it has to be remembered that Charlotte left Bruxelles on
the 2nd January, that is to say, in a period when, from Christmas day to
perhaps the 7th January, there would be holidays, and the Bruxelles
pupils would have gone to their homes. It is probable then that the
English teacher, before the breaking-up, would have taken her farewell
of her pupils in the class-rooms--this was the usual practice when a
teacher was leaving for good--and that M. Heger, whom she hoped to have
seen upon this occasion, would have been absent.
There would have been also a last lesson in class given by M. Heger
before the breaking-up for these short Christmas holidays--the last
lesson of his, that Charlotte, before she quitted the Pensionnat for
ever, would have had the chance of attending. But, _like Madame Beck_,
Madame Heger would have kept her English teacher employed in writing
letters at her dictation, in her private sitting-room, whilst this
class was going on. Like Lucy, Charlotte would have broken away at the
end, when she heard the sound of moving forms, and shutting desks,
proving the lesson ended. But here also Madame Heger would have followed
her (even as Madame Beck followed Lucy Snowe)--have kept the
under-mistress in the background, and then have taken possession of M.
Heger, on the plea of some business matter demanding his attention.
Certainly also (it seems to me) we may believe in the incident of the
scrap of paper, handed by one of the smallest girls in the school, to
Charlotte, after these two exploits of Madame Heger's diplomacy,
intended to avoid the danger--_and was not the danger real?_--of an
emotional scene of leave-taking, that might thwart her endeavour to get
Charlotte safely out of the house, without any 'inconvenient'
revelations. M. Heger may, or may not, have been as ignorant of all that
was going on between his wife and 'Mees Charlotte' as Madame Heger
desired him to be. But it would have been entirely like him, whether he
knew what was happening or not, to wish for an emotional leave-taking
with his English pupil. M. Heger liked to foster a certain amount of
sensibility in his relationships with his pupils--it did not amount to
more than a taste for dramatic situations where he had an interesting
part to play that gave his histrionic talents a good field of exercise.
But the message warning Charlotte '_that he must see her at leisure,
before she left, and talk with her at length_,' appears to me just the
sort of message M. Heger would have sent. And more especially he would
have acted thus if _in reality he had forgotten all about Charlotte's
near time of departure_ and then had suddenly remembered it, and that
'Mees' would feel hurt, and think he had behaved coldly to her. In this
case he would have tried to put himself right and to persuade her that
he had not forgotten at all, but had arranged a special opportunity for
a long talk, etc. And Charlotte believing it all, upon the strength of
this note, would have lingered on in his class-room, expecting M.
Heger,--who never appeared.
[Illustration: M. HEGER AT SIXTY (He was born in 1809: hence
thirty-four, in 1843, when Charlotte bade him farewell)]
It seems to me that, whilst it is _possible_ that Madame Heger _may_
have prevented her husband from keeping the appointment, it is also
quite _possible_ that M. Heger may have again forgotten all about it?
That would have been like him too,--as I shall show by and by.
But what I believe to have _certainly happened is that the scene between
Madame Heger and Charlotte took place just as the authoress of
'Villette' described_. That interview wears, to my mind, the stamp of
truth.
The last day broke. Now would he visit us. Now would he come
and speak his farewell, or he would vanish mute, and be seen
by us nevermore.
This alternative seemed to be present in the mind of not a
living creature in that school. All rose at the usual hour;
all breakfasted as usual; all, without reference to, or
apparent thought of, their late professor, betook themselves
with wonted phlegm to their ordinary duties.
So oblivious was the house, so tame, so trained its
proceedings, so inexpectant its aspect, I scarce knew how to
breathe in an atmosphere thus stagnant, thus smothering.
Would no one lend me a voice? Had no one a wish, no one a
word, no one a prayer to which I could say Amen?
I had seen them unanimous in demand for the merest trifle--a
treat, a holiday, a lesson's remission; they could not, they
_would_ not now band to besiege Madame Beck, and insist on a
last interview with a master who had certainly been loved,
at least by some--loved as _they_ could love; but, oh! what
_is_ the love of the multitude?
I knew where he lived; I knew where he was to be heard of or
communicated with. The distance was scarce a stone's-throw.
Had it been in the next room, unsummoned I could make no use
of my knowledge. To follow, to seek out, to remind, to
recall--for these things I had no faculty.
M. Emanuel might have passed within reach of my arm. Had he
passed silent and unnoticing, silent and stirless should I
have suffered him to go by.
Morning wasted. Afternoon came, and I thought all was over.
My heart trembled in its place. My blood was troubled in its
current. I was quite sick, and hardly knew how to keep at my
post or do my work. Yet the little world round me plodded on
indifferent; all seemed jocund, free of care, or fear, or
thought. The very pupils who, seven days since, had wept
hysterically at a startling piece of news, appeared quite to
have forgotten the news, its import, and their emotion.
A little before five o'clock, the hour of dismissal, Madame
Beck sent for me to her chamber, to read over and translate
some English letter she had received, and to write for her
the answer. Before settling to this work, I observed that
she softly closed the two doors of her chamber; she even
shut and fastened the casement, though it was a hot day, and
free circulation of air was usually regarded by her as
indispensable. Why this precaution? A keen suspicion, an
almost fierce distrust, suggested such question. Did she
want to exclude sound? What sound?
I listened as I had never listened before; I listened like
the evening and winter wolf, snuffing the snow, scenting
prey, and hearing far off the traveller's tramp. Yet I could
both listen and write. About the middle of the letter I
heard what checked my pen--a tread in the vestibule. No
door-bell had rung; Rosine--acting doubtless by orders--had
anticipated such reveille. Madame saw me halt. She coughed,
made a bustle, spoke louder. The tread had passed on to the
_classes_.
'Proceed,' said Madame; but my hand was fettered, my ear
enchained, my thoughts were carried off captive.
The _classes_ formed another building; the hall parted them
from the dwelling-house. Despite distance and partition, I
heard the sudden stir of numbers, a whole division rising at
once.
'They are putting away work,' said madame.
It was indeed the hour to put away work, but why that sudden
hush, that instant quell of the tumult?
'Wait, madam; I will see what it is.'
And I put down my pen and left her. Left her? No. She would
not be left. Powerless to detain me, she rose and followed,
close as my shadow. I turned on the last step of the stair.
'Are you coming too?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said, meeting my glance with a peculiar aspect--a
look clouded, yet resolute. We proceeded then, not together,
but she walked in my steps.
He was come. Entering the first _classe_, I saw him. There
once more appeared the form most familiar. I doubt not they
had tried to keep him away, but he was come.
The girls stood in a semicircle; he was passing round,
giving his farewells, pressing each hand, touching with his
lips each cheek. This last ceremony foreign custom permitted
at such a parting--so solemn, to last so long.
I felt it hard that Madame Beck should dog me thus,
following and watching me close. My neck and shoulder shrank
in fever under her breath; I became terribly goaded.
He was approaching; the semicircle was almost travelled
round; he came to the last pupil; he turned. But Madame was
before me; she had stepped out suddenly; she seemed to
magnify her proportions and amplify her drapery; she
eclipsed me; I was hid. She knew my weakness and deficiency;
she could calculate the degree of moral paralysis, the total
default of self-assertion, with which, in a crisis, I could
be struck. She hastened to her kinsman, she broke upon him
volubly, she mastered his attention, she hurried him to the
door--the glass door opening on the garden. I think he
looked round. Could I but have caught his eye, courage, I
think, would have rushed in to aid feeling, and there would
have been a charge, and, perhaps, a rescue; but already the
room was all confusion, the semicircle broken into groups,
my figure was lost among thirty more conspicuous. Madame had
her will. Yes, she got him away, and he had not seen me. He
thought me absent. Five o'clock struck, the loud dismissal
bell rang, the school separated, the room emptied.
There seems, to my memory, an entire darkness and
distraction in some certain minutes I then passed alone--a
grief inexpressible over a loss unendurable. _What_ should I
do--oh! _what_ should I do--when all my life's hope was thus
torn by the roots out of my riven, outraged heart?
What I _should_ have done I know not, when a little
child--the least child in the school--broke with its
simplicity and its unconsciousness into the raging yet
silent centre of that inward conflict.
'Mademoiselle,' lisped the treble voice, 'I am to give you
that. M. Paul said I was to seek you all over the house,
from the _grenier_ to the cellar, and when I found you to
give you that.'
And the child delivered a note. The little dove dropped on
my knee, its olive leaf plucked off. I found neither address
nor name, only these words,--
'It was not my intention to take leave of you when I said
good-bye to the rest, but I hoped to see you in _classe_. I
was disappointed. The interview is deferred. Be ready for
me. Ere I sail, I must see you at leisure, and speak with
you at length. Be ready. My moments are numbered, and, just
now, monopolized; besides, I have a private business on hand
which I will not share with any, nor communicate, even to
you.--Paul.'
'Be ready!' Then it must be this evening. Was he not to go
on the morrow? Yes; of that point I was certain. I had seen
the date of his vessel's departure advertised. Oh! _I_ would
be ready. But could that longed-for meeting really be
achieved? The time was so short, the schemers seemed so
watchful, so active, so hostile. The way of access appeared
strait as a gully, deep as a chasm; Apollyon straddled
across it, breathing flames. Could my Greatheart overcome?
Could my guide reach me?
Who might tell? Yet I began to take some courage, some
comfort. It seemed to me that I felt a pulse of his heart
beating yet true to the whole throb of mine.
I waited my champion. Apollyon came trailing his hell behind
him. I think if eternity held torment, its form would not be
fiery rack, nor its nature despair. I think that on a
certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will
not set, an angel entered Hades, stood, shone, smiled,
delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a
doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and
hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur
the height and compass of his promise--spoke thus, then
towering, became a star, and vanished into his own heaven.
His legacy was suspense--a worse born than despair.
All that evening I waited, trusting in the dove-sent olive
leaf, yet in the midst of my trust terribly fearing. My fear
pressed heavy. Cold and peculiar, I knew it for the partner
of a rarely-belied presentiment. The first hours seemed long
and slow; in spirit I clung to the flying skirts of the
last. They passed like drift cloud--like the rack scudding
before a storm.
Prayers were over; it was bed-time; my co-inmates were all
retired. I still remained in the gloomy first _classe_,
forgetting, or at least disregarding, rules I had never
forgotten or disregarded before.
How long I paced that _classe_, I cannot tell; I must have
been afoot many hours. Mechanically had I moved aside
benches and desks, and had made for myself a path down its
length. There I walked, and there, when certain that the
whole household were abed and quite out of hearing, there I
at last wept. Reliant on night, confiding in solitude, I
kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer. They
heaved my heart; they tore their way. In this house, what
grief could be sacred!
Soon after eleven o'clock--a very late hour in the Rue
Fossette--the door unclosed, quietly, but not stealthily; a
lamp's flame invaded the moonlight. Madame Beck entered,
with the same composed air as if coming on an ordinary
occasion, at an ordinary season. Instead of at once
addressing me, she went to her desk, took her keys, and
seemed to seek something. She loitered over this feigned
search long, too long. She was calm, too calm. My mood
scarce endured the pretence. Driven beyond common rage, two
hours since I had left behind me wonted respects and fears.
Led by a touch and ruled by a word under usual
circumstances, no yoke could now be borne, no curb obeyed.
'It is more than time for retirement,' said madame. 'The
rule of the house has already been transgressed too long.'
Madame met no answer. I did not check my walk. When she came
in my way I put her out of it.
'Let me persuade you to calm, Meess; let me lead you to your
chamber,' said she, trying to speak softly.
'No!' I said. 'Neither you nor another shall persuade or
lead me.'
'Your bed shall be warmed. Goton is sitting up still. She
shall make you comfortable. She shall give you a sedative.'
'Madame,' I broke out, 'you are a sensualist. Under all your
serenity, your peace, and your decorum, you are an undenied
sensualist. Make your own bed warm and soft; take sedatives
and meats, and drinks spiced and sweet, as much as you will.
If you have any sorrow or disappointment (and perhaps you
have--nay, I _know_ you have) seek your own palliatives in
your own chosen resources. Leave me, however. _Leave me_, I
say!'
'I must send another to watch you, Meess; I must send
Goton.'
'I forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand off me, and my
life, and my troubles. O madame! in _your_ hand there is
both chill and poison. You envenom and you paralyse.'
'What have I done, Meess? You must not marry Paul. He cannot
marry.'
'Dog in the manger!' I said, for I knew she secretly wanted
him, and had always wanted him. She called him
'insupportable'; she railed at him for a 'devot.' She did
not love; but she wanted to marry that she might bind him to
her interest. Deep into some of madame's secrets I had
entered, I know not how--by an intuition or an inspiration
which came to me, I know not whence. In the course of living
with her, too, I had slowly learned that, unless with an
inferior, she must ever be a rival. She was _my_ rival,
heart and soul, though secretly, under the smoothest
bearing, and utterly unknown to all save her and myself.
Two minutes I stood over madame, feeling that the whole
woman was in my power, because in some moods, such as the
present, in some stimulated states of perception, like that
of this instant, her habitual disguise, her mask, and her
domino were to me a mere network reticulated with holes; and
I saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, and
ignoble. She quietly retreated from me. Meek and
self-possessed, though very uneasy, she said, 'If I would
not be persuaded to take rest, she must reluctantly leave
me.' Which she did incontinent, perhaps even more glad to
get away than I was to see her vanish.
This was the sole flash-eliciting, truth-extorting rencontre
which ever occurred between me and Madame Beck; this short
night scene was never repeated. It did not one whit change
her manner to me. I do not know that she revenged it. I do
not know that she hated me the worse for my fell candour. I
think she bucklered herself with the secret philosophy of
her strong mind, and resolved to forget what it irked her to
remember. I know that to the end of our mutual lives there
occurred no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery
passage.
Is it possible to doubt that this 'fiery passage,'--or one strangely
like it--went to the building up of the impressions and emotions that
transformed the early memories of Madame Heger, of whom Charlotte once
spoke so kindly in her letters, as a generous friend who had offered her
a post in her school more from a kind wish to help her than from selfish
motives?
We have another scene of which again, it seems to me, we cannot doubt
the autobiographical reality. If one need proof of this, it may be
found in the admirable criticism of _Villette_ by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who
judges the book exclusively as the author's _literary masterpiece_. In
this masterpiece, Mrs. Humphry Ward finds one notable flaw:--_it is this
very passage_--which the critic affirms (and no doubt she is quite
right) does not strike her as a convincing nor even as a credible
account of the sentiments or behaviour that could have belonged to Lucy
Snowe, the heroine in _Villette._ 'Lucy Snowe,' this critic complains,
'could never have broken down, never have appealed for mercy, never have
cried "_My heart will break_" before her treacherous rival Madame Beck
in Paul Emanuel's presence! A reader by virtue of the very force of the
effect produced upon him by the whole creation has a right to protest,
incredible. No woman, least of all Lucy Snowe, could have so understood
her own cause, could have so fought her own battle.'
I am ready to accept this sentence as an entirely authoritative literary
sentence, first of all on account of the unquestionable claims of the
critic who utters it to pronounce judgment on these matters; and then
because I feel myself entirely unable, by reason of my personal
acquaintanceships with the real people dressed up in strange disguises
in this book, and placed in positions that the real people never
occupied, to judge this particular novel, _Villette_, from a purely
literary standpoint. Thus I agree that Mrs. Humphry Ward is right when
she says that Lucy Snowe, _by virtue of the very force of the effect
produced by this creation_, could not have said, '_My heart will break,'
before her treacherous rival Madame Beck, in Paul Emanuel's presence_. I
admit this, because Lucy Snowe, Madame Beck and Paul Emanuel, if not
absolutely 'creations,' in the sense of being imaginary characters, are
nevertheless different people from Charlotte Brontë, Madame Heger and
Monsieur Heger, and their relationships to each other are different.
Thus, in the novel Lucy Snowe is not only in love with Paul Emanuel, but
she has a perfect right to be in love with him, not only because he is
unmarried, but also because he has given her very good reason to
believe he is in love with her: and Madame Beck has no sort of right to
interfere with the lover of her English governess, and her cousin the
Professor; and all her schemes to keep these two sympathetic creatures
apart are absolutely unjustifiable, and the results of jealousy and
selfishness. In other words, Lucy has the _beau rôle_ in the piece,--she
has no reason to say, 'My heart will break,' because Madame Beck
intrudes upon her interview with Paul Emanuel.
But Charlotte had not the _beau rôle_, but the tragic one, in the real
drama. The Directress, who stands between her and the beloved Professor,
is not her rival, but the Professor's wife. And the _beau rôle_, in the
sense of having the right to stand in the way, and also in being the
woman preferred by the man whom both women love, is Madame Heger's in
every way, for Madame Heger is charming to look at, and Charlotte plain.
Therefore it is not in the least incredible, but it seems so natural as
to be almost inevitably true, that when in the very moment that poor
Charlotte has obtained, after so much suspense and waiting, and as the
result of a heaven-sent accident, the almost despaired of chance of a
personal interview with her loved Professor, before she loses sight of
him, perhaps for ever, and when in this moment, and just when he has
taken her hand in his,... Madame Heger enters, and thrusts herself
between them, and commands her husband, _'Come, Constantin_,' and
Charlotte believes he will obey, it seems to me so eminently credible as
to be almost inevitably true, that what Charlotte describes happened,
and that _then_, in dread of this new frustration of the hope so long
deferred, an anguish that 'defied suppression' rang out in the cry 'My
heart will break!' Put oneself in Charlotte's place, and it seems to me
the emotion startled to expression by this new shock, expresses just
what one knows she felt. And, therefore, I find it myself impossible to
doubt that this account is literally true, and may and should be studied
in the light of the assurance that we have here the faithful description
of what really took place, upon the very day, perhaps, when Charlotte
left Bruxelles.
Let us leave Lucy Snowe's love-story on one side, and judge this page as
one torn out of Charlotte's life--and then decide whether it rings true.
Shall I yet see him before he goes? Will he bear me in mind?
Does he purpose to come? Will this day--will the next hour
bring him? or must I again essay that corroding pain of long
attent, that rude agony of rupture at the close, that mute,
mortal wrench, which, in at once uprooting hope and doubt,
shakes life, while the hand that does the violence cannot be
caressed to pity, because absence interposes her barrier.
It was the _Feast of the Assumption_[1]; no school was held.
The boarders and teachers, after attending mass in the
morning, were gone a long walk into the country to take
their _goûter_, or afternoon meal, at some farmhouse. I did
not go with them, for now but two days remained ere the
_Paul et Virginie_ must sail, and I was clinging to my last
chance, as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last
raft or cable.
There was some joiner-work to do in the first _classe_, some
bench or desk to repair. Holidays were often turned to
account for the performance of these operations, which
could not be executed when the rooms were filled with
pupils. As I sat solitary, purposing to adjourn to the
garden and leave the coast clear, but too listless to fulfil
my own intent, I heard the workmen coming.
Foreign artisans and servants do everything by couples. I
believe it would take two Labassecourian carpenters to drive
a nail. While tying on my bonnet, which had hitherto hung by
its ribbons from my idle hand, I vaguely and momentarily
wondered to hear the step of but one _ouvrier_. I noted,
too--as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary leisure
to note the merest trifles--that this man wore shoes, and
not sabots. I concluded that it must be the master-carpenter
coming to inspect before he sent his journeymen. I threw
round me my scarf. He advanced; he opened the door. My back
was towards it. I felt a little thrill, a curious sensation,
too quick and transient to be analysed. I turned, I stood in
the supposed master-artisan's presence. Looking towards the
doorway I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes printed
upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.
Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary Heaven bring to
the suppliant no fulfilment. Once haply in life one golden
gift falls prone in the lap--one boon full and bright,
perfect from Fruition's mint.
M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he probably purposed to
travel--a surtout, guarded with velvet. I thought him
prepared for instant departure, and yet I had understood
that two days were yet to run before the ship sailed. He
looked well and cheerful. He looked kind and benign. He came
in with eagerness; he was close to me in one second; he was
all amity. It might be his bridegroom-mood which thus
brightened him. Whatever the cause, I could not meet his
sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I
would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved
him well--too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy
herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A
cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes,
would do me good for all the span of life that remained to
me. It would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness. I
would take it--I would taste the elixir, and pride should
not spill the cup.
The interview would be short, of course. He would say to me
just what he had said to each of the assembled pupils. He
would take and hold my hand two minutes. He would touch my
cheek with his lips for the first, last, only time, and
then--no more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then the
wide separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to
him, across which, haply, he would not glance to remember
me.
He took my hand in one of his; with the other he put back my
bonnet. He looked into my face, his luminous smile went out,
his lips expressed something almost like the wordless
language of a mother who finds a child greatly and
unexpectedly changed, broken with illness, or worn out by
want. A check supervened.
'Paul, Paul!' said a woman's hurried voice behind--'Paul,
come into the _salon_. I have yet a great many things to say
to you--conversation for the whole day--and so has Victor;
and Josef is here. Come, Paul--come to your friends.'
Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance or an
inscrutable instinct, pressed so near she almost thrust
herself between me and M. Emanuel. 'Come, Paul!' she
reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a
steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he
receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could
endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried,--
'My heart will break!'
What I felt seemed literal heartbreak; but the seal of
another fountain yielded under the strain. One breath from
M. Paul, the whisper, 'Trust me!' lifted a load, opened an
outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy
shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief, I wept.
'Leave her to me; it is a crisis. I will give her a cordial,
and it will pass,' said the calm Madame Beck.
To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something
like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul
answered deeply, harshly, and briefly, 'Laissez-moi!' in the
grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.
'Laissez-moi!' he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his
facial muscles all quivering as he spoke.
'But this will never do,' said madame with sternness.
More sternly rejoined her kinsman,--
'Sortez d'ici!'
'I will send for Père Silas; on the spot I will send for
him,' she threatened pertinaciously.
'Femme!' cried the professor, not now in his deep tones, but
in his highest and most excited key--'femme! sortez à
l'instant!'
He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion
beyond what I had yet felt.
'What you do is wrong,' pursued madame; 'it is an act
characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative
temperament--a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent--a
proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of
persons of steadier and more resolute character.'
'You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me,'
said he, 'but you shall see; the event shall teach you.
Modeste,' he continued, less fiercely, 'be gentle, be
pitying, be a woman. Look at this poor face, and relent. You
know I am your friend and the friend of your friends; in
spite of your taunts you well and deeply know I may be
trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty, but my
heart is pained by what I see. It _must_ have and give
solace. _Leave me!_'
This time, in the '_leave me_' there was an intonation so
bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck
herself could for one moment delay obedience. But she stood
firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eyes,
forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to
retort. I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light
and fire. I can hardly tell how he managed the movement. It
did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy. He gave
his hand; it scarce touched her, I thought; she ran, she
whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in
one second.
The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he
told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm,
dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere
long I sat beside him once more myself--reassured, not
desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless,
not sick of life and seeking death.
'It made you very sad, then, to lose your friend?' said he.
'It kills me to be forgotten, monsieur,' I said. 'All these
weary days I have not heard from you one word, and I was
crushed with the possibility, growing to certainty, that you
would depart without saying farewell.'
'Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck--that you do not
know me? Must I show and teach you my character? You _will_
have proof that I can be a firm friend? Without clear proof
this hand will not lie still in mine, it will not trust my
shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is ready. I come to
justify myself.'
'Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, monsieur; I
can listen now.'
After this, in _Villette_, the story drifts away from the real
experience of Charlotte herself, not only in the circumstances related,
but even in the emotions pictured, now painted, not from what she has
felt herself, but from what she imagines for her heroine, that other
happier self, lifted up into the heaven of romance, who, assured of Paul
Emanuel's love, and his betrothed, waits and works in the school where
he has appointed her Directress; in patient expectation of his
return,--_that never comes to pass!_ For (why or wherefore, no literary
critic of _Villette_ who measures the book by simply artistic standards
can find any reason to explain) Charlotte won't let Lucy Snowe, the
heroine, who is her other self, find happiness at last with Paul
Emanuel: or even find him again, after that cruel separation, all due to
the wicked craft and selfish jealousy of Madame Beck. Destiny
interferes; a storm; a shipwreck--one is not told _what_ has happened:
one is made to hear wailing winds and moaning ocean, that is all; we
know nothing further than this: _Lucy Snowe waited and hoped; hoped and
waited; but Paul Emanuel never came back._
But, at any rate, before he sailed on that last fatal voyage, all
misunderstandings, all doubts had been swept away. He had driven Madame
Beck from the room, and shown her his contempt and indignation. He had,
with tenderness and passion, declared his love for Lucy; and had asked
her to be his wife. This is what had followed after those scenes
between Lucy and Madame Beck in the late night scene in the class-rooms
and between Lucy and Paul Emanuel, when Madame Beck is put out of the
room by Paul Emanuel, who insists upon saying good-bye to Lucy.
All that we know of what followed these scenes, enacted under different
circumstances, in Charlotte's life, must be gathered, not by a quite
literal acceptance, but by an intelligent and impartial weighing, of her
statements, contained in a letter written on the 23rd January 1844,
three weeks after her return to Haworth.
'I suffered much before I left Brussels. I think, however long I live, I
shall not forget what the parting with M. Heger cost me: it grieved me
so much to grieve him, who had been so true, kind and disinterested a
friend. At parting, he gave me a kind of diploma certifying my abilities
as a teacher sealed with the seal of the Athenée Royal of which he is a
professor.... I do not know whether you feel as I do, but there are
times when it appears to me as if all my ideas and feelings, except a
few friendships and affections, are changed from what they used to be.
Something in me which used to be enthusiasm is tamed down and broken. I
no longer regard myself as young--indeed I shall soon be
twenty-eight--and it seems as if I ought to be working and having the
rough realities of the world as other people do.'[2]
[1] New Year's Day, perhaps? Charlotte left Bruxelles 2nd January 1843.
[2] _Life_, p. 273.