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CHAPTER XV - THE LONG VACATION
Following Madame Beck's fete, with its three preceding weeks of
relaxation, its brief twelve hours' burst of hilarity and dissipation,
and its one subsequent day of utter languor, came a period of
reaction; two months of real application, of close, hard study. These
two months, being the last of the "annee scolaire," were indeed the
only genuine working months in the year. To them was procrastinated--
into them concentrated, alike by professors, mistresses, and pupils--
the main burden of preparation for the examinations preceding the
distribution of prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in
good earnest; masters and teachers had to set their shoulders to the
wheel, to urge on the backward, and diligently aid and train the more
promising. A showy demonstration--a telling exhibition--must be got up
for public view, and all means were fair to this end.
I scarcely noted how the other teachers went to work; I had my own
business to mind; and _my_ task was not the least onerous, being
to imbue some ninety sets of brains with a due tincture of what they
considered a most complicated and difficult science, that of the
English language; and to drill ninety tongues in what, for them, was
an almost impossible pronunciation--the lisping and hissing dentals of
the Isles.
The examination-day arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious
care, dressed for with silent despatch--nothing vaporous or fluttering
now--no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was
the order of the toilette. It seemed to me that I was this day,
especially doomed--the main burden and trial falling on me alone of
all the female teachers. The others were not expected to examine in
the studies they taught; the professor of literature, M. Paul, taking
upon himself this duty. He, this school autocrat, gathered all and
sundry reins into the hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected any
colleague; he would not have help. Madame herself, who evidently
rather wished to undertake the examination in geography--her favourite
study, which she taught well--was forced to succumb, and be
subordinate to her despotic kinsman's direction. The whole staff of
instructors, male and female, he set aside, and stood on the
examiner's estrade alone. It irked him that he was forced to make one
exception to this rule. He could not manage English: he was obliged to
leave that branch of education in the English teacher's hands; which
he did, not without a flash of naive jealousy.
A constant crusade against the "amour-propre" of every human being but
himself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping little
man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own
person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He
quelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he fumed
like a bottled storm.
On the evening preceding the examination-day, I was walking in the
garden, as were the other teachers and all the boarders. M. Emanuel
joined me in the "allee defendue;" his cigar was at his lips; his
paletot--a most characteristic garment of no particular shape--hung
dark and menacing; the tassel of his bonnet grec sternly shadowed his
left temple; his black whiskers curled like those of a wrathful cat;
his blue eye had a cloud in its glitter.
"Ainsi," he began, abruptly fronting and arresting me, "vous allez
troner comme une reine; demain--troner a mes cotes? Sans doute vous
savourez d'avance les delices de l'autorite. Je crois voir en je ne
sais quoi de rayonnante, petite ambitieuse!"
Now the fact was, he happened to be entirely mistaken. I did not--
could not--estimate the admiration or the good opinion of tomorrow's
audience at the same rate he did. Had that audience numbered as many
personal friends and acquaintance for me as for him, I know not how it
might have been: I speak of the case as it stood. On me school-
triumphs shed but a cold lustre. I had wondered--and I wondered now--
how it was that for him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth
and hearth-glow. _He_ cared for them perhaps too much; _I_,
probably, too little. However, I had my own fancies as well as he. I
liked, for instance, to see M. Emanuel jealous; it lit up his nature,
and woke his spirit; it threw all sorts of queer lights and shadows
over his dun face, and into his violet-azure eyes (he used to say that
his black hair and blue eyes were "une de ses beautes"). There was a
relish in his anger; it was artless, earnest, quite unreasonable, but
never hypocritical. I uttered no disclaimer then of the complacency he
attributed to me; I merely asked where the English examination came
in--whether at the commencement or close of the day?
"I hesitate," said he, "whether at the very beginning, before many
persons are come, and when your aspiring nature will not be gratified
by a large audience, or quite at the close, when everybody is tired,
and only a jaded and worn-out attention will be at your service."
"Que vous etes dur, Monsieur!" I said, affecting dejection.
"One ought to be 'dur' with you. You are one of those beings who must
be _kept down_. I know you! I know you! Other people in this
house see you pass, and think that a colourless shadow has gone by. As
for me, I scrutinized your face once, and it sufficed."
"You are satisfied that you understand me?"
Without answering directly, he went on, "Were you not gratified when
you succeeded in that vaudeville? I watched you and saw a passionate
ardour for triumph in your physiognomy. What fire shot into the
glance! Not mere light, but flame: je me tiens pour averti."
"What feeling I had on that occasion, Monsieur--and pardon me, if I
say, you immensely exaggerate both its quality and quantity--was quite
abstract. I did not care for the vaudeville. I hated the part you
assigned me. I had not the slightest sympathy with the audience below
the stage. They are good people, doubtless, but do I know them? Are
they anything to me? Can I care for being brought before their view
again to-morrow? Will the examination be anything but a task to me--a
task I wish well over?"
"Shall I take it out of your hands?"
"With all my heart; if you do not fear failure."
"But I should fail. I only know three phrases of English, and a few
words: par exemple, de sonn, de mone, de stares--est-ce bien dit? My
opinion is that it would be better to give up the thing altogether: to
have no English examination, eh?"
"If Madame consents, I consent."
"Heartily?"
"Very heartily."
He smoked his cigar in silence. He turned suddenly.
"Donnez-moi la main," said he, and the spite and jealousy melted out
of his face, and a generous kindliness shone there instead.
"Come, we will not be rivals, we will be friends," he pursued. "The
examination shall take place, and I will choose a good moment; and
instead of vexing and hindering, as I felt half-inclined ten minutes
ago--for I have my malevolent moods: I always had from childhood--I
will aid you sincerely. After all, you are solitary and a stranger,
and have your way to make and your bread to earn; it may be well that
you should become known. We will be friends: do you agree?"
"Out of my heart, Monsieur. I am glad of a friend. I like that better
than a triumph."
"Pauvrette?" said he, and turned away and left the alley.
The examination passed over well; M. Paul was as good as his word, and
did his best to make my part easy. The next day came the distribution
of prizes; that also passed; the school broke up; the pupils went
home, and now began the long vacation.
That vacation! Shall I ever forget it? I think not. Madame Beck went,
the first day of the holidays, to join her children at the sea-side;
all the three teachers had parents or friends with whom they took
refuge; every professor quitted the city; some went to Paris, some to
Boue-Marine; M. Paul set forth on a pilgrimage to Rome; the house was
left quite empty, but for me, a servant, and a poor deformed and
imbecile pupil, a sort of cretin, whom her stepmother in a distant
province would not allow to return home.
My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its
chords. How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless!
How vast and void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the
forsaken garden--grey now with the dust of a town summer departed.
Looking forward at the commencement of those eight weeks, I hardly
knew how I was to live to the end. My spirits had long been gradually
sinking; now that the prop of employment was withdrawn, they went down
fast. Even to look forward was not to hope: the dumb future spoke no
comfort, offered no promise, gave no inducement to bear present evil
in reliance on future good. A sorrowful indifference to existence
often pressed on me--a despairing resignation to reach betimes the end
of all things earthly. Alas! When I had full leisure to look on life
as life must be looked on by such as me, I found it but a hopeless
desert: tawny sands, with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in
view. The hopes which are dear to youth, which bear it up and lead it
on, I knew not and dared not know. If they knocked at my heart
sometimes, an inhospitable bar to admission must be inwardly drawn.
When they turned away thus rejected, tears sad enough sometimes
flowed: but it could not be helped: I dared not give such guests
lodging. So mortally did I fear the sin and weakness of presumption.
Religious reader, you will preach to me a long sermon about what I
have just written, and so will you, moralist: and you, stern sage:
you, stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh. Well,
each and all, take it your own way. I accept the sermon, frown, sneer,
and laugh; perhaps you are all right: and perhaps, circumstanced like
me, you would have been, like me, wrong. The first month was, indeed,
a long, black, heavy month to me.
The cretin did not seem unhappy. I did my best to feed her well and
keep her warm, and she only asked food and sunshine, or when that
lacked, fire. Her weak faculties approved of inertion: her brain, her
eyes, her ears, her heart slept content; they could not wake to work,
so lethargy was their Paradise.
Three weeks of that vacation were hot, fair, and dry, but the fourth
and fifth were tempestuous and wet. I do not know why that change in
the atmosphere made a cruel impression on me, why the raging storm and
beating rain crushed me with a deadlier paralysis than I had
experienced while the air had remained serene; but so it was; and my
nervous system could hardly support what it had for many days and
nights to undergo in that huge empty house. How I used to pray to
Heaven for consolation and support! With what dread force the
conviction would grasp me that Fate was my permanent foe, never to be
conciliated. I did not, in my heart, arraign the mercy or justice of
God for this; I concluded it to be a part of his great plan that some
must deeply suffer while they live, and I thrilled in the certainty
that of this number, I was one.
It was some relief when an aunt of the cretin, a kind old woman, came
one day, and took away my strange, deformed companion. The hapless
creature had been at times a heavy charge; I could not take her out
beyond the garden, and I could not leave her a minute alone: for her
poor mind, like her body, was warped: its propensity was to evil. A
vague bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence, made constant
vigilance indispensable. As she very rarely spoke, and would sit for
hours together moping and mowing, and distorting her features with
indescribable grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with some
strange tameless animal, than associating with a human being. Then
there were personal attentions to be rendered which required the nerve
of a hospital nurse; my resolution was so tried, it sometimes fell
dead-sick. These duties should not have fallen on me; a servant, now
absent, had rendered them hitherto, and in the hurry of holiday
departure, no substitute to fill this office had been provided. This
tax and trial were by no means the least I have known in life. Still,
menial and distasteful as they were, my mental pain was far more
wasting and wearing. Attendance on the cretin deprived me often of the
power and inclination to swallow a meal, and sent me faint to the
fresh air, and the well or fountain in the court; but this duty never
wrung my heart, or brimmed my eyes, or scalded my cheek with tears hot
as molten metal.
The cretin being gone, I was free to walk out. At first I lacked
courage to venture very far from the Rue Fossette, but by degrees I
sought the city gates, and passed them, and then went wandering away
far along chaussees, through fields, beyond cemeteries, Catholic and
Protestant, beyond farmsteads, to lanes and little woods, and I know
not where. A goad thrust me on, a fever forbade me to rest; a want of
companionship maintained in my soul the cravings of a most deadly
famine. I often walked all day, through the burning noon and the arid
afternoon, and the dusk evening, and came back with moonrise.
While wandering in solitude, I would sometimes picture the present
probable position of others, my acquaintance. There was Madame Beck at
a cheerful watering-place with her children, her mother, and a whole
troop of friends who had sought the same scene of relaxation. Zelie
St. Pierre was at Paris, with her relatives; the other teachers were
at their homes. There was Ginevra Fanshawe, whom certain of her
connections had carried on a pleasant tour southward. Ginevra seemed
to me the happiest. She was on the route of beautiful scenery; these
September suns shone for her on fertile plains, where harvest and
vintage matured under their mellow beam. These gold and crystal moons
rose on her vision over blue horizons waved in mounted lines.
But all this was nothing; I too felt those autumn suns and saw those
harvest moons, and I almost wished to be covered in with earth and
turf, deep out of their influence; for I could not live in their
light, nor make them comrades, nor yield them affection. But Ginevra
had a kind of spirit with her, empowered to give constant strength and
comfort, to gladden daylight and embalm darkness; the best of the good
genii that guard humanity curtained her with his wings, and canopied
her head with his bending form. By True Love was Ginevra followed:
never could she be alone. Was she insensible to this presence? It
seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined
her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day
to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half
conscious of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I
conceived an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of
mutual understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a
hundred leagues--carrying, across mound and hollow, communication by
prayer and wish. Ginevra gradually became with me a sort of heroine.
One day, perceiving this growing illusion, I said, "I really believe
my nerves are getting overstretched: my mind has suffered somewhat too
much a malady is growing upon it--what shall I do? How shall I keep
well?"
Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last
a day and night of peculiarly agonizing depression were succeeded by
physical illness, I took perforce to my bed. About this time the
Indian summer closed and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine
dark and wet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf,
dishevelled--bewildered with sounding hurricane--I lay in a strange
fever of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise
in the night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A
rattle of the window, a cry of the blast only replied---Sleep never
came!
I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity she
brought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste,
that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, but
sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a
nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very
tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night
a cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no
well, but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea.
Suffering, brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for
mortal lips, tastes not as this suffering tasted. Having drank and
woke, I thought all was over: the end come and past by. Trembling
fearfully--as consciousness returned--ready to cry out on some fellow-
creature to help me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near
enough to catch the wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic could
not hear--I rose on my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me:
indescribably was I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the
horrors of that dream I think the worst lay here. Methought the well-
loved dead, who had loved _me_ well in life, met me elsewhere,
alienated: galled was my inmost spirit with an unutterable sense of
despair about the future. Motive there was none why I should try to
recover or wish to live; and yet quite unendurable was the pitiless
and haughty voice in which Death challenged me to engage his unknown
terrors. When I tried to pray I could only utter these words: "From my
youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled mind."
Most true was it.
On bringing me my tea next morning Goton urged me to call in a doctor.
I would not: I thought no doctor could cure me.
One evening--and I was not delirious: I was in my sane mind, I got up
--I dressed myself, weak and shaking. The solitude and the stillness of
the long dormitory could not be borne any longer; the ghastly white
beds were turning into spectres--the coronal of each became a death's-
head, huge and sun-bleached--dead dreams of an elder world and
mightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That evening
more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate
was of stone, and Hope a false idol--blind, bloodless, and of granite
core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its
climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling
as they were. It rained still, and blew; but with more clemency, I
thought, than it had poured and raged all day. Twilight was falling,
and I deemed its influence pitiful; from the lattice I saw coming
night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping. It seemed to me that
at this hour there was affection and sorrow in Heaven above for all
pain suffered on earth beneath; the weight of my dreadful dream became
alleviated--that insufferable thought of being no more loved--no more
owned, half-yielded to hope of the contrary--I was sure this hope
would shine clearer if I got out from under this house-roof, which was
crushing as the slab of a tomb, and went outside the city to a certain
quiet hill, a long way distant in the fields. Covered with a cloak (I
could not be delirious, for I had sense and recollection to put on
warm clothing), forth I set. The bells of a church arrested me in
passing; they seemed to call me in to the _salut_, and I went in.
Any solemn rite, any spectacle of sincere worship, any opening for
appeal to God was as welcome to me then as bread to one in extremity
of want. I knelt down with others on the stone pavement. It was an old
solemn church, its pervading gloom not gilded but purpled by light
shed through stained glass.
Few worshippers were assembled, and, the _salut_ over, half of
them departed. I discovered soon that those left remained to confess.
I did not stir. Carefully every door of the church was shut; a holy
quiet sank upon, and a solemn shade gathered about us. After a space,
breathless and spent in prayer, a penitent approached the
confessional. I watched. She whispered her avowal; her shrift was
whispered back; she returned consoled. Another went, and another. A
pale lady, kneeling near me, said in a low, kind voice:--"Go you now,
I am not quite prepared."
Mechanically obedient, I rose and went. I knew what I was about; my
mind had run over the intent with lightning-speed. To take this step
could not make me more wretched than I was; it might soothe me.
The priest within the confessional never turned his eyes to regard me;
he only quietly inclined his ear to my lips. He might be a good man,
but this duty had become to him a sort of form: he went through it
with the phlegm of custom. I hesitated; of the formula of confession I
was ignorant: instead of commencing, then, with the prelude usual, I
said:--"Mon pere, je suis Protestante."
He directly turned. He was not a native priest: of that class, the
cast of physiognomy is, almost invariably, grovelling: I saw by his
profile and brow he was a Frenchman; though grey and advanced in
years, he did not, I think, lack feeling or intelligence. He inquired,
not unkindly, why, being a Protestant, I came to him?
I said I was perishing for a word of advice or an accent of comfort. I
had been living for some weeks quite alone; I had been ill; I had a
pressure of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly any longer
endure the weight.
"Was it a sin, a crime?" he inquired, somewhat startled. I reassured
him on this point, and, as well as I could, I showed him the mere
outline of my experience.
He looked thoughtful, surprised, puzzled. "You take me unawares," said
he. "I have not had such a case as yours before: ordinarily we know
our routine, and are prepared; but this makes a great break in the
common course of confession. I am hardly furnished with counsel
fitting the circumstances."
Of course, I had not expected he would be; but the mere relief of
communication in an ear which was human and sentient, yet consecrated
--the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating, long pent-up
pain into a vessel whence it could not be again diffused--had done me
good. I was already solaced.
"Must I go, father?" I asked of him as he sat silent.
"My daughter," he said kindly--and I am sure he was a kind man: he had
a compassionate eye--"for the present you had better go: but I assure
you your words have struck me. Confession, like other things, is apt
to become formal and trivial with habit. You have come and poured your
heart out; a thing seldom done. I would fain think your case over, and
take it with me to my oratory. Were you of our faith I should know
what to say--a mind so tossed can find repose but in the bosom of
retreat, and the punctual practice of piety. The world, it is well
known, has no satisfaction for that class of natures. Holy men have
bidden penitents like you to hasten their path upward by penance,
self-denial, and difficult good works. Tears are given them here for
meat and drink--bread of affliction and waters of affliction--their
recompence comes hereafter. It is my own conviction that these
impressions under which you are smarting are messengers from God to
bring you back to the true Church. You were made for our faith: depend
upon it our faith alone could heal and help you--Protestantism is
altogether too dry, cold, prosaic for you. The further I look into
this matter, the more plainly I see it is entirely out of the common
order of things. On no account would I lose sight of you. Go, my
daughter, for the present; but return to me again."
I rose and thanked him. I was withdrawing when he signed me to return.
"You must not come to this church," said he: "I see you are ill, and
this church is too cold; you must come to my house: I live----" (and
he gave me his address). "Be there to-morrow morning at ten."
In reply to this appointment, I only bowed; and pulling down my veil,
and gathering round me my cloak, I glided away.
Did I, do you suppose, reader, contemplate venturing again within that
worthy priest's reach? As soon should I have thought of walking into a
Babylonish furnace. That priest had arms which could influence me: he
was naturally kind, with a sentimental French kindness, to whose
softness I knew myself not wholly impervious. Without respecting some
sorts of affection, there was hardly any sort having a fibre of root
in reality, which I could rely on my force wholly to withstand. Had I
gone to him, he would have shown me all that was tender, and
comforting, and gentle, in the honest Popish superstition. Then he
would have tried to kindle, blow and stir up in me the zeal of good
works. I know not how it would all have ended. We all think ourselves
strong in some points; we all know ourselves weak in many; the
probabilities are that had I visited Numero 10, Rue des Mages, at the
hour and day appointed, I might just now, instead of writing this
heretic narrative, be counting my beads in the cell of a certain
Carmelite convent on the Boulevard of Crecy, in Villette. There was
something of Fenelon about that benign old priest; and whatever most
of his brethren may be, and whatever I may think of his Church and
creed (and I like neither), of himself I must ever retain a grateful
recollection. He was kind when I needed kindness; he did me good. May
Heaven bless him!
Twilight had passed into night, and the lamps were lit in the streets
ere I issued from that sombre church. To turn back was now become
possible to me; the wild longing to breathe this October wind on the
little hill far without the city walls had ceased to be an imperative
impulse, and was softened into a wish with which Reason could cope:
she put it down, and I turned, as I thought, to the Rue Fossette. But
I had become involved in a part of the city with which I was not
familiar; it was the old part, and full of narrow streets of
picturesque, ancient, and mouldering houses. I was much too weak to be
very collected, and I was still too careless of my own welfare and
safety to be cautious; I grew embarrassed; I got immeshed in a network
of turns unknown. I was lost and had no resolution to ask guidance of
any passenger.
If the storm had lulled a little at sunset, it made up now for lost
time. Strong and horizontal thundered the current of the wind from
north-west to south-east; it brought rain like spray, and sometimes a
sharp hail, like shot: it was cold and pierced me to the vitals. I
bent my head to meet it, but it beat me back. My heart did not fail at
all in this conflict; I only wished that I had wings and could ascend
the gale, spread and repose my pinions on its strength, career in its
course, sweep where it swept. While wishing this, I suddenly felt
colder where before I was cold, and more powerless where before I was
weak. I tried to reach the porch of a great building near, but the
mass of frontage and the giant spire turned black and vanished from my
eyes. Instead of sinking on the steps as I intended, I seemed to pitch
headlong down an abyss. I remember no more.
Content of CHAPTER XV - THE LONG VACATION [Charlotte Bronte's novel: Villette]
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