Free Villette by Charlotte Brontë Page B

›
chose
‹ came in at every turn in her conversation – the convenient substitute for any missing word in any language she might chance at the time to be speaking. French girls often do the like; from them she had caught the custom. ›
Chose
‹ however, I found, in this instance, stood for Villette – the great capital of the great kingdom of Labassecour.
    »Do you like Villette?« I asked.
    »Pretty well. The natives, you know, are intensely stupid and vulgar; but there are some nice English families.«
    »Are you in a school?«
    »Yes.«
    »A good one?«
    »Oh no! horrid: but I go out every Sunday, and care nothing about the
maîtresses
or the
professeurs,
or the
élèves,
and send lessons
au diable;
(one dare n't say that in English, you know, but it sounds quite right in French,) and thus I get on charmingly ... You are laughing at me again?«
    »No – I am only smiling at my own thoughts.«
    »What are they?« (without waiting for an answer) – »Now
do
tell me where you are going.«
    »Where Fate may lead me. My business is to earn a living where I can find it.«
    »To earn!« (in consternation) »are you poor then?«
    »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 mama, 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 god-papa 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 mama 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 sea-sick?«
    »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 sea-birds 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 dream-land, 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