The Casket in the Garden — Villette

Behind Madame Beck's house, the garden still carries a convent story. A black and white nun is said to walk there, and under a half-dead pear tree a smooth black slab shows through the moss, called the door of a vault where a girl was buried alive for breaking her vows. Lucy treats the tale as romantic rubbish and keeps the garden for herself at morning and at twilight, when the boarders are at their books and the bells of St Jean Baptiste sound over the alleys. She takes the forbidden walk along the college wall, the allée défendue, scrubs a mouldy seat at the far end, and Madame Beck smiles and tells her to stay there. On this evening a crescent moon shows through the boughs. Lucy thinks of England, of storms that wake a hunger she cannot feed, and of how she knocks that hunger down the way Jael drove a nail through Sisera's temple. Tonight the hunger is quiet. The night feels like hope with no object attached to it.

Nine strikes. A casement creaks, a tree shakes, and a small ivory box falls at her feet. Violets cover a pink note addressed to the grey dress. Lucy is wearing French grey, yet she cannot believe the note is a love letter meant for her. The other teachers and the older pupils collect admiring looks. She does not. She opens it anyway. The writer thanks an angel for keeping a promise, admits he feared the dragon of an English teacher in that alley, and says he is visiting little Gustave in a master's room whose lattice overlooks the garden. He saw a straw hat and a grey dress through the leaves and threw the casket while the physician examined the child. Lucy wishes she knew both the writer and the woman addressed. Madame Beck wears grey. So do another teacher and three boarders. The straw hat is an ordinary garden screen. Lights move in the dormitory. She has to go in.

A cautious bell rings. Rosine runs from the portress's cabinet, and the doctor comes through the garden, trampling flowers, until he reaches the forbidden walk. Lucy tells him the box is found. He says not to betray her. She answers that she cannot betray what the note does not reveal, and she watches him colour as he reads words she does not believe he wrote. He asks whether she will tell Madame Beck and cause a stir. She thinks she ought to tell, and she also thinks Madame is too prudent to make a noise. Then she sees Rosine in the doorway, and Rosine's dress is grey, like her own. If no pupil is implicated, Lucy says, she will stand aside. She gives him the casket, the flowers, and the note. He points. Madame Beck, in shawl, wrapping-gown, and slippers, is stealing round the garden like a cat. He crosses the beds in two bounds. Rosine shuts the door between him and the huntress.

Lucy stays and meets Madame in the open. She expects a reprimand for remaining so late. None comes. Madame claims she only came out to taste the evening air, walks the main alley with her, leans on her shoulder at the steps, and offers her cheek with a kind goodnight. Lucy lies awake, smiling at that suavity. She knows the tone. From some window or parted bough, Madame has caught enough of the night to want the rest of the knot untied, and in the middle of it she has Lucy folded up like a fly in cobweb.