The Worlds Greatest Books - Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
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That evening I formed a project of crossing to a continental port, and
finding a vessel was about to start, I joined her at once in the river.
When the packet sailed at sunrise, I found the only passenger on board
to whom I cared to speak--and who, indeed, insisted on speaking to
me--was a girl of seventeen on her way to school in the city of
Villette. Miss Ginevra Fanshawe carelessly ran on with a full account of
herself, her school at Madame Beck's, her poverty at home, her education
by her godfather, De Bassompierre, who lived in France, her want of
accomplishments--except that she could talk, play, and dance--and the
need for her to marry a rather elderly gentleman with cash.
It was this irresponsible talk, no doubt, that led me, in the absence of
any other leading, to make Villette my destination. On my arrival there,
an English gentleman, young, distinguished, and handsome, observing my
inability to make myself understood at the bureau where the diligence
stopped, inquired kindly if I had any friends in the city, and on my
replying that I had not, gave me the address of such an inn as I wanted,
and personally directed me part of the way. Even then, however, I failed
in the gloom to find the inn, and was becoming quite exhausted, when
over the door of a house, loftier by a storey than those around it, I
saw a brass plate with the inscription, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles,"
and, beneath, the name, "Madame Beck." Providence said: "Stop here; this
is your inn." I rang the door-bell.
"May I see Madame Beck?" I inquired of the servant who opened the door.
As I spoke in English I was admitted without a moment's hesitation.
I sat, turning hot and cold, in a glittering salon for a quarter of an
hour, and then a voice said: "You ayre Engliss?"
The question came from a motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl,
a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with the shoes of
silence.
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, passionless, 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
classroom, 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 asserts. She is charged with a role; without that role
the play stopped. Englishwomen are either the best or the worst of their
sex. 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 identity 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 godmother's house at Bretton. Nay, there, on the
linen of my bed, were my godmothers 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 pronounced 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 godmother, 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 identity 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 naivete was
in part assumed.
One morning my godmother decreed that we should go with Graham to a
concert that night, at which the most advanced pupils of the
conservatoire were to perform. There, in the suite of the British
embassy, was Ginevra Fanshawe, seated by the daughter of an English
peer. I noticed that she looked quite steadily at Dr. John, and then
raised a glass to examine his mother, and a minute or two afterwards
laughingly whispered to her neighbour.
"Miss Fanshawe is here," I whispered. "Have you noticed her?"
"Oh yes," was the reply; "and I happen to know her companion, who is a
proud girl, but not in the least insolent; and I doubt whether Ginevra
will have gained ground in her estimation by making a butt of her
neighbours."
"What neighbours?"
"Myself and my mother. As for me, it is very natural; but my mother! I
never saw her ridiculed before. Through me she could not in ten years
have done what in a moment she has done through my mother."
Never before had I seen so much fire and so little sunshine in Dr.
John's blue eyes.
"My mother shall not be ridiculed with my consent, or without my scorn,"
he added. "Mother," said he to her later, "You are better to me than ten
wives." And when we were out in the keen night air, he said to himself:
"Thank you, Miss Fanshawe. I am glad you laughed at my mother. That
sneer did me a world of good."
_V.--Reunion Completed_
One evening in December Dr. Bretton called to take me to the theatre in
place of his mother, who had been prevented by an arrival. In the course
of the performance a cry of "Fire!" rang out, and a panic ensued. Graham
remained quite cool until he saw a young girl struck from her
protector's arms and hurled under the feet of the crowd. Then he rushed
forward, thrust back the throng with the assistance of the gentleman--a
powerful man, though grey-haired--and bore the girl into the fresh
night, I following him closely.
"She is very light," he said; "like a child."
"I am not a child! I am a person of seventeen!" responded his burden,
demurely.
Her father's carriage drove up, and Graham, having introduced himself as
an English doctor, we drove to the hotel where father and daughter were
staying in handsome apartments. The injuries were not dangerous, and the
father, after earnestly expressing his obligations to Graham, asked him
to call the next day.
When next I visited the Bretton's chateau I found an intruder in the
room I had occupied during my illness.
"Miss de Bassompierre, I pronounced, recognising the rescued lady, whose
name I had heard on the night of the accident.
"No," was the reply. "Not Miss de Bassompierre to you." Then, as I
seemed at fault, she added: "You have forgotten, then, that I have sat
on your knee, been lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow. I am
Paulina Mary Home de Bassompierre."
I often visited Mary de Bassompierre with pleasure. That young lady had
different moods for different people. With her father she was even now a
child. With me she was serious and womanly. With Mrs. Bretton she was
docile and reliant. With Graham she was shy--very shy. At moments she
tried to be cold, and, on occasion, she endeavoured to shun him. Even
her father noticed this demeanour in her, and asked her what her old
friend had done.
"Nothing," she replied; "but we are grown strange to each other."
I became apprised of the return of M. de Bassompierre and Paulina, after
a few weeks' absence in Paris, by seeing them riding before me in a
quiet boulevard with Dr. Bretton. How animated was Graham's face! How
true, yet how retiring the joy it expressed! They parted. He passed me
at speed, hardly feeling the earth he skimmed, and seeing nothing on
either hand.
It was after this that she made me her confession of love, and of fear
lest her father should be grieved.
"I wish papa knew! I do wish papa knew!" began now to be her anxious
murmur; but it was M. de Bassompierre who first broached the subject of
his daughter's affections, and it was to me that he introduced it. She
came into the room while we talked and Graham followed.
"Take her, John Bretton," he said, "and may God deal with you as you
deal with her!"
_VI.--A Professor's Love-Story_
The pupils from the schools of the city were assembled for the yearly
prize distribution--a ceremony followed by an oration from one of the
professors. I think I was glad when M. Paul appeared behind the crimson
desk, fierce and frank, dark and candid, testy and fearless, for then I
knew that neither formalism nor flattery would be the doom of the
audience.
On Monsieur's birthday it was the habit of the scholars to present him
with flowers, and I had worked a beaded watch-chain, and enclosed it in
a sparkling shell-box, with his initials graved on the lid. He entered
that day in a mood that made him as good as a sunbeam, and each pupil
presented her bouquet, till he was hidden at his desk behind a pile of
flowers. I waited. Then he demanded thrice, in tragic tones: "Is that
all?" The effect was ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had
passed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and
particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and
that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was he of
friendliness.
The professor's care for me took curious forms. He haunted my desk with
unseen gift-bringing--the newest books, the correction of exercises, the
concealment of bonbons, of which he was fond.
One day he asked me whether, if I were his sister, I should always be
content to stay with a brother such as he. I said I believed I should.
He continued: "If I were to go beyond seas for two or three years,
should you welcome me on my return?"
"Monsieur, how could I live in the interval?" was my reply.
The explanation of that question soon came. He had, it seemed, to sail
to Basseterre, in Guadeloupe, to attend to a friend's business
interests. For what I felt there was no help, and how could I help
feeling?
Of late he had spent hours with me, with temper soothed, with eye
content, with manner home-like and mild. The mutual understanding was
settling and fixing. And when the time came for him to say good-bye, we
rambled forth into the city. He talked of his voyage. What did I propose
to do in his absence? He did not like leaving me at Madame Beck's--I
should be so desolate.
We were now returning from our walk, when, passing a small but pleasant
and neat abode in a clean _faubourg_, he took a key from his pocket,
opened, and entered. "_Voici!_" he cried, and put a prospectus in my
hand. "Externat de demoiselles. Numero 7, Faubourg Clotilde. Directrice,
Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe."
"Now," said he, "you shall live here and have a school. You shall employ
yourself while I am away; you shall think of me; you shall mind your
health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back----"
I touched his hand with my lips. Royal to me had been its bounty.
And now three years are past. M. Emanuel's return is fixed. He is to be
with me ere the mists of November come. My school flourishes; my house
is ready.
But the skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west. Peace,
peace, Banshee--"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till
the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand
weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice;
but when the sun returned, his light was night to some!
Here pause. Enough is said. Trouble no kind heart. Leave sunny
imaginations hope. Let them picture union and a happy life.
* * * * *
EMILY BRONTE
Wuthering Heights
"That chainless soul," Emily Jane Bronte, was born at
Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at
Haworth on December 19, 1848. She will always have a place in
English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful,
strained novel, "Wuthering Heights," and a few poems. Emily
Bronte, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan
School and at Brussels. For a time she became a governess, but
it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination
of the Yorkshire moors, and she went home to keep house at the
Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught. Two months after
the publication of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, that is, in
December, 1847, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, and "Agnes
Grey," by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were
issued in one volume. The critics, who did not discover these
books were by women, suggested persistently that "Wuthering
Heights" must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte).
A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware
of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame.
She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and
lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no
doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell. That
she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect
and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent
criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.
_I.--A Surly Brood_
"Mr. Heathcliff?"
A nod was the answer.
"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir."
"Walk in." But the invitation, uttered with closed teeth, expressed the
sentiment "Go to the deuce!" And it was not till my horse's breast
fairly pushed the barrier that he put out his hand to unchain it. I felt
interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself
as he preceded me up the causeway, calling, "Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's
horse; and bring up some wine."
Joseph was an old man, very old, though hale and sinewy. "The Lord help
us!" he soliloquised in an undertone as he relieved me of my horse.
Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, is a farmhouse on an
exposed and stormy edge, its name being significant of atmospheric
tumult. Its owner is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and
manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose
demeanour. One step from the outside brought us into the family
living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured
bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs. As the
bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress
her, an action that provoked a long, guttural growl.
"You'd better let the dog alone," growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, as
he checked her with a punch of his foot. "She's not accustomed to be
spoiled."
As Joseph was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and
gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me
_vis-a-vis_ with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends
that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a
poker and called aloud for assistance.
"What the devil is the matter?" asked Heathcliff, as he returned.
"What the devil, indeed!" I muttered. "You might as well leave a
stranger with a brood of tigers!"
"They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing," he remarked. "The
dogs are right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine."
Before I went home I determined to volunteer another visit to my sulky
landlord, though evidently he wished for no repetition of my intrusion.
* * * * *
Yesterday I again visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to
Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a
black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked
for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar-
faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and
shouted to me.
"What are ye for? T' maister's down i' t' fowld. There's nobbut t'
missis. I'll hae no hend wi't," muttered the head, vanishing.
Then a young man, without coat and shouldering a pitchfork, hailed me to
follow him, and showed me into the apartment where I had been formerly
received with a gruff "Sit down; he'll be in soon."
In the room sat the "missis," motionless and mute. She was slender,
scarcely past girlhood, with the most exquisite little face I have ever
had the pleasure of beholding; and her eyes, had they been agreeable in
expression, would have been irresistible. But the only sentiment they
evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation. As for the
young man who had brought me in, he slung on his person a shabby jacket,
and, erecting himself before the fire, gazed down on me from the corner
of his eyes as if there was some mortal feud unavenged between us. The
entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from an uncomfortable state.
I found in the course of the tea which followed that the lady was the
widow of Heathcliff's son, and that the rustic youth who sat down to the
meal with us was Hareton Earnshaw. Now, before passing the threshold, I
had noticed over the principal door, among a wilderness of crumbling
griffins and shameless little boys, the name "Hareton Earnshaw" and the
date "1500." Evidently the place had a history.
The snow had fallen so deeply since I entered the house that return
across the moor in the dusk was impossible.
Spending that night at Wuthering Heights on an old-fashioned couch that
filled a recess, or closet, in a disused chamber, I found, scratched on
the paint many times, the names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine
Heathcliff," and again "Catherine Linton." There were many books in the
room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined
them. Some of them bore the inscription "Catherine Earnshaw, her book";
and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a
regular diary. I read: "Hindley is detestable. Heathcliff and I are
going to rebel.... How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry
so! Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit
or eat with us any more."
When I slept I was harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left
the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of
the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a
kitten from fatigue.
When my housekeeper, Mrs. Nelly Dean, brought in my supper that night I
asked her why Heathcliff let the Grange and preferred living in a
residence so much inferior.
"He's rich enough to live in a finer house than this," said Mrs. Dean;
"but he's very close-handed. Young Mrs. Heathcliff is my late master's
daughter--Catherine Linton was her maiden name, and I nursed her, poor
thing. Hareton Earnshaw is her cousin, and the last of an old family."
"The master, Heathcliff, must have had some ups and downs to make him
such a churl. Do you know anything of his history?"
"It's a cuckoo's, sir. I know all about it, except where he was born,
and who were his parents, and how he got his money. And Hareton Earnshaw
has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock."
I asked Mrs. Dean to bring her sewing, and continue the story. This she
did, evidently pleased to find me companionable.
_II.--The Story Runs Backward_
Before I came to live here (began Mrs. Dean), I was almost always at
Wuthering Heights, because my mother nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that
was Hareton's father, and I used to run errands and play with the
children. One day, old Mr. Earnshaw, Hareton's grandfather, went to
Liverpool, and promised Hindley and Cathy, his son and daughter, to
bring each of them a present. He was absent three days, and at the end
of that time brought home, bundled up in his arms under his great-coat,
a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough both to walk and talk,
but only able to talk gibberish nobody could understand. He had picked
it up, he said, starving and homeless in the streets of Liverpool. Mrs.
Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors, but Mr. Earnshaw told her
to wash it, give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.
The children's presents were forgotten. This was how Heathcliff, as they
called him, came to Wuthering Heights.