Truth Unveiled, Illusions Shattered — Villette

Lucy cannot leave the clique under the trees. A lamp shows her one safe seat and goes out. She sets down what rumour has given her through the dark fortnight about why Paul is going. The tale is short and not new. Its start is money and its end is interest. Madame Walravens, hideous as an idol, still has an idol's consequence. She was very rich, is now without the command of money, and may be rich again. At Basseterre, in Guadaloupe, she owns a large estate, her dowry from sixty years ago, sequestered since her husband's failure, and now supposed clear of claim if an upright agent looks after it. Père Silas wants that prospect for religion and the church, of which Magliore Walravens is a devout daughter. Madame Beck, distantly related, harshly treated, and still courting the old woman because she has no family of her own, wants it with a mother's calculating foresight. The agent they need must be devoted, because the distance is great and the climate hazardous. They have kept just such a man for twenty years. The priest says that if his pupil remains in Europe he runs the risk of apostasy, entangled with a heretic. Madame's private comment is that what she cannot obtain, another shall not win. She would rather destroy it. Madame Walravens wants her money and her land, and knows Paul can be the best and faithfullest steward. The three band together. They reason, appeal, and implore, and ask two or three years, after which he shall live for himself. One of them, perhaps, wishes he may die in the meantime. Paul does not spurn a trust laid humbly in his hands. What his private pain or his own calculations may be, nobody asks. He is gone, and has made no sign. There Lucy's knowledge closes.

Bent among the stems, she can hear the neighbours if she chooses. For a while they gossip about dresses, music, illuminations, and the fine night. She listens for someone to say the Antigua will sail prosperously. Nobody names the ship, the course, or the passenger. Madame Walravens is restless, looking through the trees as if expecting an arrival, muttering where are they, why do they not come. At last she speaks aloud, and the phrase shocks Lucy: where, then, is Justine Marie? Lucy's answer would be the grave. The circle is not startled. Justine Marie is coming. She is in the kiosk. She will be here presently. From broken hints Lucy gathers a scheme, a marriage, a fortune, perhaps for Victor Kint, perhaps for Josef Emanuel, both bachelors, and once she thinks the jests fall on a fair-haired foreigner they call Heinrich Mühler. The old woman still menaces Désirée with her staff whenever the child stirs.

Someone cries that Justine Marie is arriving. Lucy calls up the pictured nun, the sad love story, the garret, the alley, the berceau, and leans forward to see the spectre face to face. A torch passes. Josef Emanuel cries that she comes. The figure in the flambeau's light is not a risen ghost. She is a girl fresh from her pensionnat, comely, well nourished, fair and fat of flesh, handsomely dressed, laughing with an uncle and an aunt. Lucy says so much for ghosts. This girl is not the nun of the attic, who was taller by a span. Nor is the girl a stranger. She visits the Rue Fossette, often at Madame Beck's Sunday parties. She is a relation of both the Becks and the Walravens, baptised for the sainted nun who would have been her aunt, an orphan heiress of the name Sauveur, and Paul's ward. Some say he is her godfather. The junta wish this heiress married to one of their band. Lucy cannot yet tell which.

The third of the company is Paul. They said he would sail by the Antigua. Madame Beck said so. She lied, or she failed to correct a truth that had gone false. The Antigua is gone, and he stands there. A huge load leaves Lucy, and she does not know if she is glad. He had let the Antigua go of his own will, against his friends' advice, and taken a berth in the Paul et Virginie, to sail a fortnight later, for a little piece of business he had set his heart on. A look passes between him and Justine Marie. He asks if the little one will help him. She answers at once that she will help with all her heart, and that her godfather may do with her what he wills. He lifts her hand to his lips. Heinrich Mühler grows restless and grumbles. Paul laughs in his face and, with the triumph of an assured conqueror, draws his ward nearer. He is the life of the party, a little despotic, wittiest and frankest, multiplying himself to wait on all, and still Lucy sees which one he folds from the night air and cherishes. The hints say that while he is absent, working for others, those others will guard the treasure he leaves in Europe. Let him bring an Indian fortune. They will give him a young bride and a rich inheritance. The vow of constancy looks forgotten. The blooming present prevails, and his nun is buried.

Lucy will not pause for a slower reading. Some would doubt a marriage between a poor unselfish man of forty and his wealthy ward of eighteen. She hastens to accept the whole plan, nails the certainty in, and stands up calling herself free. Truth, she tells herself, has stripped away the flattering falsehood. She will not stay to watch the love scene. Jealousy tears under the shawl, a vulture she must grapple alone. This is not the pain of Graham and Paulina, which she could seal off and still grant a charm. This touches the love she had a stake in. Midnight is long past. The concert is over. The crowds thin. She follows the ebb out of the radiant park into the lower quarter, where the moon, forgotten among the lamps, rides high again. She would linger in the still streets, but she means to be in her bed before Madame comes home.

One street from the Rue Fossette, a carriage tears up the peace, comes fast, and thunders past. Something white flutters at the window. A hand waves a handkerchief. She has no time to know if the signal is for her. At the pensionnat no fiacre has yet brought Madame and Désirée. The great door she left ajar still yields. She makes it fast, mounts shoeless, and reaches her couch. Between the curtains of the twentieth bed, which she left empty, lies a long dark shape. By the night lamp it is the old phantom, the nun. She does not shriek. She rushes on the couch, tears the figure up, shakes it, and treads the shreds. It is a bolster dressed in a long black stole and a white veil, real nun's garments arranged for illusion. Pinned to the head-bandage, a pencil slip says the nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe her wardrobe and will be seen in the Rue Fossette no more. Lucy has seen that ghost three times. No woman she knows has the stature. She cannot yet lay the trick on any man. She bundles stole, veil, and bandages under her pillow, hears the wheels of Madame's fiacre, and, worn out and perhaps overtaken at last by the drug, sleeps.