Villette - Charlotte Brontë (best fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

“As poor as Job.”

(After a pause) “Bah! how unpleasant! But I know what it is to be poor: they are poor enough at home⁠—papa and mamma, and all of them. Papa is called Captain Fanshawe; he is an officer on half-pay, but well-descended, and some of our connections are great enough; but my uncle and godpapa De Bassompierre, who lives in France, is the only one that helps us: he educates us girls. I have five sisters and three brothers. By-and-by we are to marry⁠—rather elderly gentlemen, I suppose, with cash: papa and mamma manage that. My sister Augusta is married now to a man much older-looking than papa. Augusta is very beautiful⁠—not in my style⁠—but dark; her husband, Mr. Davies, had the yellow fever in India, and he is still the colour of a guinea; but then he is rich, and Augusta has her carriage and establishment, and we all think she has done perfectly well. Now, this is better than ‘earning a living,’ as you say. By the way, are you clever?”

“No⁠—not at all.”

“You can play, sing, speak three or four languages?”

“By no means.”

“Still I think you are clever” (a pause and a yawn).

“Shall you be seasick?”

“Shall you?”

“Oh, immensely! as soon as ever we get in sight of the sea: I begin, indeed, to feel it already. I shall go below; and won’t I order about that fat odious stewardess! Heureusement je sais faire aller mon monde.”

Down she went.

It was not long before the other passengers followed her: throughout the afternoon I remained on deck alone. When I recall the tranquil, and even happy mood in which I passed those hours, and remember, at the same time, the position in which I was placed; its hazardous⁠—some would have said its hopeless⁠—character; I feel that, as⁠—

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars⁠—a cage

so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.

I was not sick till long after we passed Margate, and deep was the pleasure I drank in with the sea-breeze; divine the delight I drew from the heaving Channel waves, from the seabirds on their ridges, from the white sails on their dark distance, from the quiet yet beclouded sky, overhanging all. In my reverie, methought I saw the continent of Europe, like a wide dreamland, far away. Sunshine lay on it, making the long coast one line of gold; tiniest tracery of clustered town and snow-gleaming tower, of woods deep massed, of heights serrated, of smooth pasturage and veiny stream, embossed the metal-bright prospect. For background, spread a sky, solemn and dark blue, and⁠—grand with imperial promise, soft with tints of enchantment⁠—strode from north to south a God-bent bow, an arch of hope.

Cancel the whole of that, if you please, reader⁠—or rather let it stand, and draw thence a moral⁠—an alliterative, text-hand copy⁠—

Daydreams are delusions of the demon.

Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into the cabin.

Miss Fanshawe’s berth chanced to be next mine; and, I am sorry to say, she tormented me with an unsparing selfishness during the whole time of our mutual distress. Nothing could exceed her impatience and fretfulness. The Watsons, who were very sick too, and on whom the stewardess attended with shameless partiality, were stoics compared with her. Many a time since have I noticed, in persons of Ginevra Fanshawe’s light, careless temperament, and fair, fragile style of beauty, an entire incapacity to endure: they seem to sour in adversity, like small beer in thunder. The man who takes such a woman for his wife, ought to be prepared to guarantee her an existence all sunshine. Indignant at last with her teasing peevishness, I curtly requested her “to hold her tongue.” The rebuff did her good, and it was observable that she liked me no worse for it.

As dark night drew on, the sea roughened: larger waves swayed strong against the vessel’s side. It was strange to reflect that blackness and water were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing straight on her pathless way, despite noise, billow, and rising gale. Articles of furniture began to fall about, and it became needful to lash them to their places; the passengers grew sicker than ever; Miss Fanshawe declared, with groans, that she must die.

“Not just yet, honey,” said the stewardess. “We’re just in port.” Accordingly, in another quarter of an hour, a calm fell upon us all; and about midnight the voyage ended.

I was sorry: yes, I was sorry. My resting-time was past; my difficulties⁠—my stringent difficulties⁠—recommenced. When I went on deck, the cold air and black scowl of the night seemed to rebuke me for my presumption in being where I was: the lights of the foreign seaport town, glimmering round the foreign harbour, met me like unnumbered threatening eyes. Friends came on board to welcome the Watsons; a whole family of friends surrounded and bore away Miss Fanshawe; I⁠—but I dared not for one moment dwell on a comparison of positions.

Yet where should I go? I must go somewhere. Necessity dare not be nice. As I gave the stewardess her fee⁠—and she seemed surprised at receiving a coin of more value than, from such a quarter, her coarse calculations had probably reckoned on⁠—I said, “Be kind enough to direct me to some quiet, respectable inn, where I can go for the night.”

She not only gave me the required direction, but called a commissionaire, and bid him take charge of me, and⁠—not my trunk, for that was gone to the customhouse.

I followed this man along a rudely-paved street, lit now by a fitful gleam of moonlight; he brought me to the inn. I offered him sixpence, which he refused to take; supposing it not enough, I changed it for a shilling; but this also he declined, speaking rather sharply, in a language to me