The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Bronte

  “You understand English?” was the prefatory question.

  “A little.”

  “Well, then, you shall have plenty of it; and first, I see you’ve not much more sense than some others of my acquaintance” (indicating me with his thumb), “or else you’d never turn rabid about that dirty little country called England; for rabid, I see you are; I read Anglophobia in your looks, and hear it in your words. Why, mademoiselle, is it possible that anybody with a grain of rationality should feel enthusiasm about a mere name, and that name England? I thought you were a lady-abbess five minutes ago, and respected you accordingly; and now I see you are a sort of Swiss sibyl, with high Tory and high Church principles!”

  “England is your country?” asked Frances.

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t like it?”

  “I’d be sorry to like it! A little corrupt, venal, lord-and-king-cursed nation, full of mucky pride (as they say in — — shire), and helpless pauperism; rotten with abuses, worm-eaten with prejudices!”

  “You might say so of almost every state; there are abuses and prejudices everywhere, and I thought fewer in England than in other countries.”

  “Come to England and see. Come to Birmingham and Manchester; come to St. Giles’ in London, and get a practical notion of how our system works. Examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English cottage doors; get a glimpse of Famine crouched torpid on black hearthstones; of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer to her than thatched hovels — — “

  “I was not thinking of the wretchedness and vice in England; I was thinking of the good side — of what is elevated in your character as a nation.”

  “There is no good side — none at least of which you can have any knowledge; for you cannot appreciate the efforts of industry, the achievements of enterprise, or the discoveries of science: narrowness of education and obscurity of position quite incapacitate you from understanding these points; and as to historical and poetical associations, I will not insult you, mademoiselle, by supposing that you alluded to such humbug.”

  “But I did partly.”

  Hunsden laughed — his laugh of unmitigated scorn.

  “I did, Mr. Hunsden. Are you of the number of those to whom such associations give no pleasure?”

  “Mademoiselle, what is an association? I never saw one. What is its length, breadth, weight, value — ay, VALUE? What price will it bring in the market?”

  “Your portrait, to any one who loved you, would, for the sake of association, be without price.”

  That inscrutable Hunsden heard this remark and felt it rather acutely, too, somewhere; for he coloured — a thing not unusual with him, when hit unawares on a tender point. A sort of trouble momentarily darkened his eye, and I believe he filled up the transient pause succeeding his antagonist’s home-thrust, by a wish that some one did love him as he would like to be loved — some one whose love he could unreservedly return.

  The lady pursued her temporary advantage.

  “If your world is a world without associations, Mr. Hunsden, I no longer wonder that you hate England so. I don’t clearly know what Paradise is, and what angels are; yet taking it to be the most glorious region I can conceive, and angels the most elevated existences — if one of them — if Abdiel the Faithful himself” (she was thinking of Milton) “were suddenly stripped of the faculty of association, I think he would soon rush forth from ‘the ever-during gates,’ leave heaven, and seek what he had lost in hell. Yes, in the very hell from which he turned ‘with retorted scorn.’”

  Frances’ tone in saying this was as marked as her language, and it was when the word “hell” twanged off from her lips, with a somewhat startling emphasis, that Hunsden deigned to bestow one slight glance of admiration. He liked something strong, whether in man or woman; he liked whatever dared to clear conventional limits. He had never before heard a lady say “hell” with that uncompromising sort of accent, and the sound pleased him from a lady’s lips; he would fain have had Frances to strike the string again, but it was not in her way. The display of eccentric vigour never gave her pleasure, and it only sounded in her voice or flashed in her countenance when extraordinary circumstances — and those generally painful — forced it out of the depths where it burned latent. To me, once or twice, she had in intimate conversation, uttered venturous thoughts in nervous language; but when the hour of such manifestation was past, I could not recall it; it came of itself and of itself departed. Hunsden’s excitations she put by soon with a smile, and recurring to the theme of disputation, said —

  “Since England is nothing, why do the continental nations respect her so?”

  “I should have thought no child would have asked that question,” replied Hunsden, who never at any time gave information without reproving for stupidity those who asked it of him. “If you had been my pupil, as I suppose you once had the misfortune to be that of a deplorable character not a hundred miles off, I would have put you in the corner for such a confession of ignorance. Why, mademoiselle, can’t you see that it is our GOLD which buys us French politeness, German goodwill, and Swiss servility?” And he sneered diabolically.

  “Swiss?” said Frances, catching the word “servility.” “Do you call my countrymen servile?” and she started up. I could not suppress a low laugh; there was ire in her glance and defiance in her attitude. “Do you abuse Switzerland to me, Mr. Hunsden? Do you think I have no associations? Do you calculate that I am prepared to dwell only on what vice and degradation may be found in Alpine villages, and to leave quite out of my heart the social greatness of my countrymen, and our blood-earned freedom, and the natural glories of our mountains? You’re mistaken — you’re mistaken.”

  “Social greatness? Call it what you will, your countrymen are sensible fellows; they make a marketable article of what to you is an abstract idea; they have, ere this, sold their social greatness and also their blood-earned freedom to be the servants of foreign kings.”

  “You never were in Switzerland?”

  “Yes — I have been there twice.”

  “You know nothing of it.”

  “I do.”

  “And you say the Swiss are mercenary, as a parrot says ‘Poor Poll,’ or as the Belgians here say the English are not brave, or as the French accuse them of being perfidious: there is no justice in your dictums.”

  “There is truth.”

  “I tell you, Mr. Hunsden, you are a more unpractical man than I am an unpractical woman, for you don’t acknowledge what really exists; you want to annihilate individual patriotism and national greatness as an atheist would annihilate God and his own soul, by denying their existence.”

  “Where are you flying to? You are off at a tangent — I thought we were talking about the mercenary nature of the Swiss.”

  “We were — and if you proved to me that the Swiss are mercenary tomorrow (which you cannot do) I should love Switzerland still.”

  “You would be mad, then — mad as a March hare — to indulge in a passion for millions of shiploads of soil, timber, snow, and ice.”

  “Not so mad as you who love nothing.”

  “There’s a method in my madness; there’s none in yours.”

  “Your method is to squeeze the sap out of creation and make manure of the refuse, by way of turning it to what you call use.”

  “You cannot reason at all,” said Hunsden; “there is no logic in you.”

  “Better to be without logic than without feeling,” retorted Frances, who was now passing backwards and forwards from her cupboard to the table, intent, if not on hospitable thoughts, at least on hospitable deeds, for she was laying the cloth, and putting plates, knives and forks thereon.

  “Is that a hit at me, mademoiselle? Do you suppose I am without feeling?”

  “I suppose you are
always interfering with your own feelings, and those of other people, and dogmatizing about the irrationality of this, that, and the other sentiment, and then ordering it to be suppressed because you imagine it to be inconsistent with logic.”

  “I do right.”

  Frances had stepped out of sight into a sort of little pantry; she soon reappeared.

  “You do right? Indeed, no! You are much mistaken if you think so. Just be so good as to let me get to the fire, Mr. Hunsden; I have something to cook.” (An interval occupied in settling a casserole on the fire; then, while she stirred its contents:) “Right! as if it were right to crush any pleasurable sentiment that God has given to man, especially any sentiment that, like patriotism, spreads man’s selfishness in wider circles” (fire stirred, dish put down before it).

  “Were you born in Switzerland?”

  “I should think so, or else why should I call it my country?”

  “And where did you get your English features and figure?”

  “I am English, too; half the blood in my veins is English; thus I have a right to a double power of patriotism, possessing an interest in two noble, free, and fortunate countries.”

  “You had an English mother?”

  “Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your interest?”

  “On the contrary, I’m a universal patriot, if you could understand me rightly: my country is the world.”

  “Sympathies so widely diffused must be very shallow: will you have the goodness to come to table. Monsieur” (to me who appeared to be now absorbed in reading by moonlight) — “Monsieur, supper is served.”

  This was said in quite a different voice to that in which she had been bandying phrases with Mr. Hunsden — not so short, graver and softer.

  “Frances, what do you mean by preparing, supper? we had no intention of staying.”

  “Ah, monsieur, but you have stayed, and supper is prepared; you have only the alternative of eating it.”

  The meal was a foreign one, of course; it consisted in two small but tasty dishes of meat prepared with skill and served with nicety; a salad and “fromage francais,” completed it. The business of eating interposed a brief truce between the belligerents, but no sooner was supper disposed of than they were at it again. The fresh subject of dispute ran on the spirit of religious intolerance which Mr. Hunsden affirmed to exist strongly in Switzerland, notwithstanding the professed attachment of the Swiss to freedom. Here Frances had greatly the worst of it, not only because she was unskilled to argue, but because her own real opinions on the point in question happened to coincide pretty nearly with Mr. Hunsden’s, and she only contradicted him out of opposition. At last she gave in, confessing that she thought as he thought, but bidding him take notice that she did not consider herself beaten.

  “No more did the French at Waterloo,” said Hunsden.

  “There is no comparison between the cases,” rejoined Frances; “mine was a sham fight.”

  “Sham or real, it’s up with you.”

  “No; though I have neither logic nor wealth of words, yet in a case where my opinion really differed from yours, I would adhere to it when I had not another word to say in its defence; you should be baffled by dumb determination. You speak of Waterloo; your Wellington ought to have been conquered there, according to Napoleon; but he persevered in spite of the laws of war, and was victorious in defiance of military tactics. I would do as he did.”

  “I’ll be bound for it you would; probably you have some of the same sort of stubborn stuff in you.

  “I should be sorry if I had not; he and Tell were brothers, and I’d scorn the Swiss, man or woman, who had none of the much-enduring nature of our heroic William in his soul.”

  “If Tell was like Wellington, he was an ass.”

  “Does not ASS mean BAUDET?” asked Frances, turning to me.

  “No, no,” replied I, “it means an ESPRIT-FORT; and now,” I continued, as I saw that fresh occasion of strife was brewing between these two, “it is high time to go.”

  Hunsden rose. “Good bye,” said he to Frances; “I shall be off for this glorious England tomorrow, and it may be twelve months or more before I come to Brussels again; whenever I do come I’ll seek you out, and you shall see if I don’t find means to make you fiercer than a dragon. You’ve done pretty well this evening, but next interview you shall challenge me outright. Meantime you’re doomed to become Mrs. William Crimsworth, I suppose; poor young lady? but you have a spark of spirit; cherish it, and give the Professor the full benefit thereof.”

  “Are you married. Mr. Hunsden?” asked Frances, suddenly.

  “No. I should have thought you might have guessed I was a Benedict by my look.”

  “Well, whenever you marry don’t take a wife out of Switzerland; for if you begin blaspheming Helvetia, and cursing the cantons — above all, if you mention the word ASS in the same breath with the name Tell (for ass IS baudet, I know; though Monsieur is pleased to translate it ESPRIT-FORT) your mountain maid will some night smother her Breton-bretonnant, even as your own Shakspeare’s Othello smothered Desdemona.”

  “I am warned,” said Hunsden; “and so are you, lad,” (nodding to me). “I hope yet to hear of a travesty of the Moor and his gentle lady, in which the parts shall be reversed according to the plan just sketched — you, however, being in my nightcap. Farewell, mademoiselle!” He bowed on her hand, absolutely like Sir Charles Grandison on that of Harriet Byron; adding — “Death from such fingers would not be without charms.”

  “Mon Dieu!” murmured Frances, opening her large eyes and lifting her distinctly arched brows; “c’est qu’il fait des compliments! je ne m’y suis pas attendu.” She smiled, half in ire, half in mirth, curtsied with foreign grace, and so they parted.

  No sooner had we got into the street than Hunsden collared me.

  “And that is your lace-mender?” said he; “and you reckon you have done a fine, magnanimous thing in offering to marry her? You, a scion of Seacombe, have proved your disdain of social distinctions by taking up with an ouvriere! And I pitied the fellow, thinking his feelings had misled him, and that he had hurt himself by contracting a low match!”

  “Just let go my collar, Hunsden.”

  “On the contrary, he swayed me to and fro; so I grappled him round the waist. It was dark; the street lonely and lampless. We had then a tug for it; and after we had both rolled on the pavement, and with difficulty picked ourselves up, we agreed to walk on more soberly.

  “Yes, that’s my lace-mender,” said I; “and she is to be mine for life — God willing.”

  “God is not willing — you can’t suppose it; what business have you to be suited so well with a partner? And she treats you with a sort of respect, too, and says, ‘Monsieur’ and modulates her tone in addressing you, actually, as if you were something superior! She could not evince more deference to such a one as I, were she favoured by fortune to the supreme extent of being my choice instead of yours.”

  “Hunsden, you’re a puppy. But you’ve only seen the title-page of my happiness; you don’t know the tale that follows; you cannot conceive the interest and sweet variety and thrilling excitement of the narrative.”

  Hunsden — speaking low and deep, for we had now entered a busier street — desired me to hold my peace, threatening to do something dreadful if I stimulated his wrath further by boasting. I laughed till my sides ached. We soon reached his hotel; before he entered it, he said —

  “Don’t be vainglorious. Your lace-mender is too good for you, but not good enough for me; neither physically nor morally does she come up to my ideal of a woman. No; I dream of something far beyond that pale-faced, excitable little Helvetian (by-the-by she has infinitely more of the nervous, mobile Parisienne in her than of the the robust ‘jungfrau’). Your Mdlle. Henri is in person “chetive”, in mind “sans caractere”, compared with the queen of my visions. You, indeed, may put up with that “minois chiffone
”; but when I marry I must have straighter and more harmonious features, to say nothing of a nobler and better developed shape than that perverse, ill-thriven child can boast.”

  “Bribe a seraph to fetch you a coal of fire from heaven, if you will,” said I, “and with it kindle life in the tallest, fattest, most boneless, fullest-blooded of Ruben’s painted women — leave me only my Alpine peri, and I’ll not envy you.”

  With a simultaneous movement, each turned his back on the other. Neither said “God bless you;” yet on the morrow the sea was to roll between us.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  Table of Contents

  IN two months more Frances had fulfilled the time of mourning for her aunt. One January morning — the first of the new year holidays — I went in a fiacre, accompanied only by M. Vandenhuten, to the Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges, and having alighted alone and walked upstairs, I found Frances apparently waiting for me, dressed in a style scarcely appropriate to that cold, bright, frosty day. Never till now had I seen her attired in any other than black or sad-coloured stuff; and there she stood by the window, clad all in white, and white of a most diaphanous texture; her array was very simple, to be sure, but it looked imposing and festal because it was so clear, full, and floating; a veil shadowed her head, and hung below her knee; a little wreath of pink flowers fastened it to her thickly tressed Grecian plait, and thence it fell softly on each side of her face. Singular to state, she was, or had been crying; when I asked her if she were ready, she said “Yes, monsieur,” with something very like a checked sob; and when I took a shawl, which lay on the table, and folded it round her, not only did tear after tear course unbidden down her cheek, but she shook to my ministration like a reed. I said I was sorry to see her in such low spirits, and requested to be allowed an insight into the origin thereof. She only said, “It was impossible to help it,” and then voluntarily, though hurriedly, putting her hand into mine, accompanied me out of the room, and ran downstairs with a quick, uncertain step, like one who was eager to get some formidable piece of business over. I put her into the fiacre. M. Vandenhuten received her, and seated her beside himself; we drove all together to the Protestant chapel, went through a certain service in the Common Prayer Book, and she and I came out married. M. Vandenhuten had given the bride away.