The Secret of Charlotte Bronte Part 3

'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 h.e.l.l 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 compa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 _cla.s.se_, forgetting, or at least disregarding, rules I had never forgotten or disregarded before.

How long I paced that _cla.s.se_, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ign.o.ble. 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 repet.i.tion of, no allusion to, that fiery pa.s.sage.

Is it possible to doubt that this 'fiery pa.s.sage,'--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 pa.s.sage_--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 p.r.o.nounce judgment on these matters; and then because I feel myself entirely unable, by reason of my personal acquaintances.h.i.+ps 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 Bronte, Madame Heger and Monsieur Heger, and their relations.h.i.+ps 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 role_ 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 role_, 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 role_, 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 a.s.surance 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 a.s.sumption_[1]; no school was held.

The boarders and teachers, after attending ma.s.s in the morning, were gone a long walk into the country to take their _goter_, 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 _cla.s.se_, 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 Laba.s.secourian 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 a.n.a.lysed. 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 p.r.o.ne 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 s.h.i.+p 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ver, 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 pa.s.s,' 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 Pere 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 a l'instant!'

He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a pa.s.sion beyond what I had yet felt.