The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 16

As I told my story, through a mistress who had been summoned to translate the speech of Albion, I thought the tale won madame's ear, though never a gleam of sympathy crossed her countenance. A man's step was heard in the vestibule, hastily proceeding to the outer door.

"Who goes out now?" demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.

"M. Paul Emanuel," replied the teacher.

"The very man! Call him."

He entered: a small, dark, and square man, in spectacles.

"_Mon cousin_," began madame, "read that countenance."

The little man fixed on me his spectacles, a gathering of the brows seeming to say that a veil would be no veil to him.

"Do you need her services?" he asked.

"I could do with them," said Madame Beck.

"Engage her." And with a _ban soir_ this sudden arbiter of my destiny vanished.

Madame Beck possessed high administrative powers. She ruled a hundred and twenty pupils, four teachers, eight masters, six servants and three children, and managed the pupils' parents and friends to perfection, without apparent effort. "Surveillance," "espionage"--these were the watchwords of her system. She knew what honesty was, and liked it--when it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, pa.s.sionless, watchful and inscrutable--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?

Not a soul in all Madame Beck's house, from the scullion to the directress herself, but was above being ashamed of a lie; they thought nothing of it.

Here Miss Ginevra Fanshawe was a thriving pupil. She had a considerable range of acquaintances outside the school, for Mrs. Cholmondeley, her chaperon, a gay, fashionable lady, took her to evening parties at the houses of her acquaintances. Soon I discovered by hints that ardent admiration, perhaps genuine love, was at the command of this pretty and charming, but by no means refined, girl. She called her suitor "Isidore," and bragged about the vehemence of his attachment. I asked her if she loved him in return.

"He is handsome; he loves me to distraction; and so I am amused," was the reply.

"But if he loves you, and it comes to nothing in the end, he will be miserable."

"Of course he will break his heart. I should be disappointed if he didn't."

"Do try to get a clear idea of the state of your own mind," I said, "for to me it really seems as chaotic as a rag-bag."

"It is something in this fashion. He thinks far more of me than I find it convenient to be, while I am more at ease with you, you old cross- patch, you who know me to be coquettish and ignorant and fickle."

"You love M. Isidore far more than you think or will avow."

"No. I danced with a young officer the other night whom I love a thousand times more than he. Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far better. _Vive les joies et les plaisirs_!"

It was as English teacher that I was engaged at Madame Beck's school, but the annual fete brought me into prominence in another capacity. The programme included a dramatic performance, with pupils and teachers for actors, and this was given under the superintendence of M. Paul Emanuel.

I was dressed a couple of hours before anyone else, and reading in my cla.s.sroom, the door was flung open, and in came M. Paul with a burst of execrable jargon: "Mees, play you must; I am planted here."

"What can I do for you?" I inquired.

"Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude.

Let us thrust to the wall all reluctance."

What did the little man mean?

"Listen!" he said. "The case shall be stated, and you shall answer me 'Yes' or 'No.' Louise Vanderkelkov has fallen ill--at least, so her ridiculous mother a.s.serts. She is charged with a role; without that role the play stopped. Englishwomen are either the best or the worst of their s.e.x. I apply to an Englishwoman to save me. What is her answer--'Yes,'

or 'No'?"

Seeing in his vexed, fiery and searching eye an appeal behind its menace, my lips dropped the word "Oui."

His rigid countenance relaxed with a quiver of content; then he went on:

"Here is the book. Here is your role. You must withdraw." He conveyed me to the attic, locked me in, and took away the key.

What I felt that successful night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and do than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. A keen relish for dramatic expression revealed itself as part of my nature. But the strength of longing must be put by; and I put it by, and fastened it in with the lock of a resolution which neither time nor temptation has since picked.

It was at this school fete that I discovered the ident.i.ty of Miss Fanshawe's M. Isidore. She whispered to me, after the play: "Isidore and Alfred de Hamal are both here!" The latter I found was a straight-nosed, correct-featured little dandy, nicely dressed, curled, booted, and gloved; and Isidore was the manly English Dr. John, who attended the pupils of the school, and was none other than the gentleman whose directions to an hotel I had failed to follow on the night of my arrival in Villette. And the puppet, the manikin--a mere lackey for Dr. John, his valet, his foot-boy, was the favoured admirer of Ginevra Fanshawe!

_III.--Old Friends are Best_

During the long vacation I stayed at the school, and, in the absence of companionship and the sedative of work, suffered such agonising depression as led to physical illness, until one evening, after wandering aimlessly in the city, I fell fainting as I tried to reach the porch of a great church. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself in a room that smiled "Auld lang syne" out of every nook.

Where was I? The furniture was that with which I had been so intimate in the drawing-room of my G.o.dmother's house at Bretton. Nay, there, on the linen of my bed, were my G.o.dmothers initials "L.L.B."; and there was the portrait that used to hang over the mantelpiece in the breakfast-room in the old house at Bretton. I audibly p.r.o.nounced the name--"Graham!"

"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at my bedside. "Do you want Graham?"

She was little changed; something sterner, something more robust, but it was my G.o.dmother, Mrs. Bretton.

"How was I found, madam?"

"My son shall tell you by and by," said she. "I am told you are an English teacher in a foreign school here."

Before evening I was downstairs, and seated in a corner, when Graham arrived home, and entered with the question: "How is your patient, mamma?"

At Mrs. Bretton's invitation, I came forward to speak for myself where he stood at the hearth, a figure justifying his mother's pride.

"Much better," I said calmly; "much better, I thank you Dr. John."

For this tall young man, this host of mine, was Dr. John, and I had been aware of his ident.i.ty for some time.

Ere we had sat ten minutes, I caught the eye of Mrs. Bretton fixed steadily on me, and at last she asked, "Tell me, Graham, of whom does this young lady remind you."

"Dr. John has had so much to do and think of," said I, seeing how it must end, "that it never occurred to me as possible that he should recognise Lucy Snowe."

"Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!" cried Mrs. Bretton, as she stepped across the hearth and kissed me. And I wondered if Mrs. Bretton knew at whose feet her idolised son had laid his homage.

_IV.--A Cure for First Love_

The Brettons, who had regained some of their fortune, lived in a chateau outside Villette, a course further warranted by Dr. John's professional success. In the months, that followed I heard much of Ginevra. He thought her so fair, so good, so innocent, and yet, though love is blind, I saw sometimes a subtle ray sped sideways from his eye that half led me to think his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe's navete was in part a.s.sumed.