Villette (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charlotte Bronte [273]
Producing a second key, M. Emanuel adjusted it to the lock of this door. He opened, put me in before him.
‘Voici!’ he cried.
I found myself in a good-sized apartment, scrupulously clean, though bare, compared with those I had hitherto seen. The well-scoured boards were carpetless; it contained two rows of green benches and desks, with an alley down the centre, terminating in an estrade, a teacher’s chair and table; behind them a tableau. On the walls hung two maps; in the windows flowered a few hardy plants; in short, here was a miniature classe—complete, neat, pleasant.
‘It is a school then?’ said I, ‘Who keeps it? I never heard of an establishment in this faubourg.’
‘Will you have the goodness to accept of a few prospectuses for distribution in behalf of a friend of mine?’ asked he, taking from his surtout-pocket some quires of these documents, and putting them into my hand. I looked, I read—printed in fair characters:—
‘Externat de demoiselles.jr Numéro 7, Faubourg Clotilde. Directrice, Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe.’
And what did I say to M. Paul Emanuel?
Certain junctures of our lives must always be difficult to recall to memory. Certain points, crises, certain feelings, joys, griefs, and amazements, when reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun.
I can no more remember the thoughts or the words of the ten minutes succeeding this disclosure, than I can retrace the experience of my earliest year of life: and yet the first thing distinct to me is the consciousness that I was speaking very fast, repeating over and over again:—
‘Did you do this, M. Paul? Is this your house? Did you furnish it? Did you get these papers printed? Do you mean me? Am I the directress? Is there another Lucy Snowe? Tell me: say something.’
But he would not speak. His pleased silence, his laughing down-look, his attitude, are visible to me now.
‘How is it? I must know all—all,’ I cried.
The packet of papers fell on the floor. He had extended his hand, and I had fastened thereon, oblivious of all else.
‘Ah! you said I had forgotten you all these weary days,’ said he. ‘Poor old Emanuel! These are the thanks he gets for trudging about three mortal weeks from house-painter to upholsterer, from cabinet-maker to charwoman. Lucy and Lucy’s cot, the sole thoughts in his head!’
I hardly knew what to do. I first caressed the soft velvet on his cuff, and then I stroked the hand it surrounded. It was his foresight, his goodness, his silent, strong, effective goodness, that overpowered me by their proved reality. It was the assurance of his sleepless interest which broke on me like a light from heaven; it was his (I will dare to say it) his fond, tender look, which now shook me indescribably. In the midst of all, I forced myself to look at the practical.
‘The trouble!’ I cried, ‘and the cost! Had you money, M. Paul?’
‘Plenty of money!’ said he heartily. ‘The disposal of my large teaching-connection put me in possession of a handsome sum: with part of it I determined to give myself the richest treat that I have known or shall know. I like this. I have reckoned on this hour day and night lately. I would not come near you, because I would not forestal it. Reserve is neither my virtue nor my vice. If I had put myself into your power, and you had begun with your questions of look and lip—Where have you been, M. Paul? What have you been doing? What is your mystery?—my solitary first and last secret would presently have unravelled itself in your lap. Now,’ he pursued, ‘you shall live here and have a school; you shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall think of me sometimes; you shall mind your health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back—’
There he left a blank.
I promised to do all he told me. I promised to work hard and willingly. ‘I will be your faithful steward,’ I said;